To the experts, it’s a Geomagnetic Disturbance, or GMD. To most of us, it’s a solar flare.
Whatever its name, it can fry a large electricity system, burn out controls, and black out square miles in seconds, like the massive flare that brought down the grid in Canada’s Quebec province for nine hours in 1989.
Now, the power industry and regulators responsible for electric reliability are trying to figure out how to stop it, or at least minimize the potential damage. Keep reading →
As utilities generate more electricity from natural gas, the potential is emerging for freak weather or other events to cause problems for both delivery systems and create a cascading regional disaster, industry officials and regulators concluded in a “stress test scenario” played out in Washington, DC this past Sunday.
Planning to avoid such events, in which problems in the gas system aggravate problems in the electric system and vice-versa, is complicated by the two energy systems’ significantly different regulatory structures, officials said. Keep reading →
