Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumA Drill to Replace Crucial Transformers
But engineers in the electric business and officials with the Department of Homeland Security have long been concerned that transformers are vulnerable to disruptions from extreme weather like hurricanes, as well as terrorist and computer attacks and even electrical disturbances from geomagnetic, or so-called solar, storms. One such storm, in 1989, blacked out the entire province of Quebec, and this week, a transformer fire of unknown origin blacked out parts of Boston.
And while replacing transformers is not technically difficult, it is a logistical and time-consuming nightmare that can take up to two years.
So this week the industry and the government have been carrying out an emergency drill unlike any that electrical engineers can remember, to explore how quickly the country could recover from a crippling blow to the power grid. Twelve trucks drove 800 miles from St. Louis to Houston to deliver three recovery transformers. When they arrived on Tuesday afternoon, workers began to install them as quickly as possible reducing a task that normally takes weeks to several days.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/business/energy-environment/electric-industry-runs-transformer-replacement-test.html?_r=1
OnlinePoker
(5,715 posts)You can have all the technology in the world, but without brute strength it won't get you anywhere.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)It took them something like 3 weeks to get the replacement from California. I bet if they lost several, it would take a lot longer to find replacements for all of them.
When I drive by some of the local substations, I usually find myself thinking that a couple dozen people with a few basic tools and some C4 could literally force the evacuation of the metro area. Disable all refrigeration, air conditioning, internet, etc, for several weeks, in, say July?
Maybe they're better protected than I think, but all I see from the road is a wall with some razor wire.
saras
(6,670 posts)All you have to do is get enough metal in there without killing yourself, the power from the grid itself will do the rest. If you're willing to kill yourself, land a small plane on top of one, dragging as much chain as the plane will lift. I imagine just a few bullet holes, if you hit copper wire and not the iron core, will produce some pretty spectacular self-heating.
If there were a real army, you could do this at tens of thousands of sites, from the smallest up, and it might be decades before the country had normal power again. More likely they'd modernize.
Shimon Tzabar suggests the ideal war to lose is one that destroys your infrastructure and compels the victors to replace it with up-to-date infrastructure.
bbgrunt
(5,281 posts)pscot
(21,024 posts)Doh!