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

194National Energy Security(The Soviet spy agency—the KGB—is widely believed, for example, to interceptvirtually all transcontinental phone traffic.) The fewer nodes and linksthere are, the fewer ways there are to reroute calls and keep a damaged networkoperating. But the more nodes and links there are, the easier it is forphone phreaks to penetrate and misuse the network.Interconnected electric power grids give rise to similar compromises.Studies of grid vulnerability show the virtue of a rich structure of interconnections,like the veins of a leaf. 56 They also show the desirability of avoiding big,lumpy nodes or supply concentrations which would tend to focus the probabilityand consequences of failure. That is, a system made up of a number ofenergy sources that can route their output using many different paths of roughlyequal capacity, diffusing the risk rather than relying unduly on particularsources or conduits, can usually deliver the energy somehow to where it isneeded. (A fundamental property of eco-systems is that they tend to spread outtheir energy flows evenly through a food web in just this way.) Many U.S.power grids, however, lack this property. Their supply is too lumpy or theirnodes are too lumpy to spread the risk. On a regional scale, therefore, theapparent flexibility of rerouting power, just as with telephone calls, may well bevulnerable to disruption of just a few key nodes. (Some observers say this isnot the case, 57 but they do not appear to have thought very hard about it.)A grid which is well interconnected and distributes its risk among manypoints is the electrical system of a World War II battleship. Knowing that the shipwas likely to get shot up, the designers equipped it with multiple electric supplybusses (main power distribution cables), each with spare capacity, which ranthrough different parts of the ship. They could be hooked up in many differentpermutations to improvise continued power supplies even after severe damage.Likewise, in the World War II destroyer, each of the four boilers could be fedinto any of the four engines. The extra pipes (links) and valves (nodes) were costly,but greatly increased “survivability.” This principle is not consistently followedin some modern destroyers, 58 far less in many giant oil tankers (whosesteering and other vital functions depend on unreplicated steam sources) 59 oreven in the world’s largest passenger liner. 60 Evidently the tried-and-true principlesof redundant, substitutable components that naval architects knew two generationsago are now being sacrificed for illusory cost savings. Chapter Nine suggestedthat the same is occurring in refinery and pipeline design.Optional interconnection There are at least four strategies, usable singly orin combination, for isolating failures before they can spread. (Military designerscall this practice “damage limitation”; computer designers, “error containment.”)The first method is to make each component of a system optionally