Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Ten: Power Stations and Grids 133standby-generator power supplies, all these links are vulnerable to disruption.With microwaves, for example, “the loss of one base or repeating station caneasily make a large portion of the communication system inoperable.” 69 Mostutility operations can probably be disrupted far more easily by attacks on theircommunication systems than on generation, transmission, or distribution components.Without instant communication, or at least an army of experts in thefield who can manually operate the equipment according to prompt radioinstructions, the stability of the grid will be in danger. Such improvised handoperation probably could not protect the grid from sudden, major shocks arisingfrom the loss of major transmission, switching, or generating capacity.Few utilities have installed comprehensive, reliable systems of underfrequencyrelays to ensure that if control and synchronicity are lost, the grid willautomatically isolate itself into many small islands. This would maintain servicewhere possible and at least prevent serious damage to major equipment.Lacking such automatic “sectionalization,” many utilities’ only alternative tofunctioning control and communication systems is system-wide collapse.Another point of vulnerability is the centralized control centers themselves.Of course, power engineers have tried to make the centers’ equipment reliable:Because of their vital role in system reliability, the computer facilities in control centersare usually doubly redundant (backed up by a complete set of duplicate facilities);in at least one center they are triply redundant. Their power supplies are“uninterruptable” and are also often doubly redundant. 70Yet as simple a thing as a pocket magnet can give a computer amnesia. At ahigher level of sophistication, a portable device concealed in a delivery vancan produce a credible imitation, on a local scale, of the electromagnetic pulseproduced by high-altitude nuclear explosions (Chapter Seven). 71 Done outsidea grid control center, this could probably make most of its computers andother equipment permanently inoperable.Another disturbing possibility, to which no attention appears to have beengiven, is that rather than merely cutting communications, a saboteur might—likea phone phreak—prefer to use them. Indeed, both private and public telephonelines can be tapped into remotely, as noted in Chapter Two, and many utilities’control computers—not merely their accounting computers—appear to be accessibleto phone phreaks. Such codes as are normally used are easily broken bythe phreaks’ microcomputers. Worse still, despite the encoding used on someutility microwave networks, it is probably well within the capabilities of manyelectronic enthusiasts to tap into a utility microwave net, using a portable dish,and effectively to take over the grid. Sitting in a van on a hillside somewhere,they could experiment with cutting power plants in and out, changing grid con-