People began bringing electricity into their homes in the late 1800s. For the first few years it was a dangerous proposition, but over time it evolved into something in the background, taken for granted. Who would choose to read a book by the flickering, smoky light cast by an oil lamp over the soothing glow of an LED bulb? And people, particularly those born in the 21st century, can scarcely imagine not being able to charge their phones and other devices. Some electricity is good, so more must be better.
The government intends to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the next dozen years. There has been talk of forcing people to get rid of their fossil-fuel home heating in favour of electrical warmers. Overlooked is the question of how robust our electrical grid really is. Weather-related disruptions make the news regularly. In Canada ice storms often leave people in the dark and cold for days at a time. In Texas in 2021 bad weather left more than five million homes without electricity -- and hundreds of people died. Even at current consumption levels the electric grid has shown inadequacies.
Another, more insidious threat comes from cyber space. There have already been cyber attacks on infrastructure (see reference below.)
The granddaddy of threats, though, comes from the sun. In 1859 the largest solar flare recorded to date (the “Carrington Event”) hit the earth and played havoc with the rudimentary power grid of the time (reference below). Telegraph lines conducted surges of atmospheric electricity, in some cases setting telegraph equipment on fire.
A comparable solar flare today would, for a time, put society back two hundred years. And almost no one in Canada has any experience living without electricity. You wouldn’t just be doing without your Tesla and your iPhone. Everything that sets modern life apart from the pioneer days would be gone.
And for how long? Potentially years. Key nodes of the grid are high-voltage transformers. Transformers will be destroyed in large numbers in a modern Carrington Event. And replacements aren’t exactly sitting on shelves at Home Depot. Society is already critically dependent on electricity. And on a highly vulnerable grid. Before we go about increasing our dependence on it we urgently need to shore the grid up.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8473297/