Off the Grid...

 

 

 

"It is a mess. It is a disaster just waiting to happen..."

My word, we sure have a lot to worry about these days! If it is not Ebola, it is ISIL. If it is not ISIL, it is our national debt. If not the debt, it is a possible new Cold War with Russia. If not problems with Russia, it is some kind of EMP event which would cripple or destroy our power grid.

Our power grid. Now there is a subject which I have not thought of for a while. And yet, we all should be thinking about it each and every day. Ignoring our grid is like a heavy smoker ignoring a nagging cough for months. Our grid is ancient. It is comprised of two large and three smaller grids tied into one tangled mess.

Not to be Debbie Downer on a beautiful Tuesday morning, but I need to bring this up once again. Many people don't realize how much of our daily life is tied into this fragile power grid of ours. Simply put, if the grid goes down, so does our lifestyle. Or to put it on a more basic level, if our grid goes down, people will die. And not just a few, maybe millions.

We know how to fix the grid. We have known how for years. At one time, we had only one or two fixes. Now we have many. And yet we do nothing. Why? No national will. We will ignore it or worry about it until it becomes a problem. The issue with that thinking is this - once it becomes a problem, it will be too late. Lights out (literally) and our party will be over.

In the paper today, this issue was discussed. One solution offered was to break our gargantuan and ancient grid into "micro-grids". Having micro-grids with smart technology would do wonders. Making sensitive and critical junctions rugged and "rad hardened" would really help. Some of these new technologies have already been tried on a small scale. That is fine, but we need large scale fixes. We need to our entire grid re-tooled and upgraded. By not doing so, we are living on borrowed time. People that believe this might be right.

The next time you flick on the lights, draw a glass of water, or flush the toilet, think of our grid. Think what your life would be like with no refrigerator, no stove, no oven, no water, no lights, no heat, no nothing. That is what it would be like for the majority of our population if the grid goes out. It would take months, maybe years to get it back up and running. By that time, our time would have run out. None of us can afford that - not at all.