Electric Grid Vulneratbilites

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We have all probably experienced short electrical blackouts lasting minutes or hours after a storm, but what are the chances of a much longer one?  Are storms the only major threat to the electrical grid?  Can we always count on utilities to quickly restore power?  What preparations should we make?

Michael Patton will outline what he sees as possible major threats to the electrical grid in the Cincinnati area: weather, human error, massive solar flare with coronal mass ejection, physical attack, electromagnetic pulse, fuel shortages, and hacking.  He will estimate the possible time to recover from a realistic worst case for each.  Spoiler alert: he is not a “doomer.”  At the end he will suggest preparations which do not involve moving to a mountain in Idaho.

Michael Patton is a professional engineer who has been working locally 25 years in the aerospace industry.  He is interested in alternative energy, film, and history, especially the history of the American Indians in this area and of Cincinnati when it was the frontier.  He is a frequent contributor to Streetvibes, the biweekly paper of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless and which is sold downtown.  Seminars at EmpowerU are one of the sources used for the articles.

He has learned that much news and even many histories are often so incomplete to be quite misleading.  A good question to keep in mind is, “what am I not being told?”  Among his favorite authors are Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged), C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters and That Hideous Strength), Agatha Christie (mystery writer and observer of human nature extraordinaire), and G.K. Chesterton (religious writer and author of the Father Brown mysteries).  One of his favorite quotes is by Chesterton and is appropriate whenever your view and actions are outside the norm: “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”