Re: infrastructure and faux-diversity
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/infrastructure-and-faux-diversity-tp7600791p7600801.html
I got a good premonition of this event with a major DOE project
some 15 years ago to build coupled ODE (ordinary differential
equation) models of 20-something infrastructures... energy
infrastructures comprising about 1/6 of them... the funding/goal
was in response to terrorist threat but since we were also
modeling natural disasters and cascading failures... the variety
of intra-US geopolitical idiosyncrasies was very eye-opening.
Another obvious not-obvious "cut" in *all* infrastructure
networks is the Mississippi river where *virtually all* networks
are connected at the few Interstate and rail bridges. Modern
communications does not depend as *much* on physical connections
(e.g. microwave links) but we don't have any meaningful analogs
for transportation, power lines, pipelines, raw and processed
materials/food, etc.
As I learned it then, TX is very self-isolating for myriad
reasons ranging from being large enough and self-sufficient enough
to "get away with it" (until now?) to something more like a
collective "character flaw". I suppose AK is *more* prone to
these challenges and CA has the similar risks but different
character flaws(?). Private, for-profit concerns will naturally
optimize for shareholders over stakeholders (think PG&E and
the wildfire disasters of late), and short(er) over long(er) term
concerns.
As a practical matter, it an emergent collective awareness of the
supply-demand oscillations by the consumers in TX might reduce if
not actually avert system collapses/failures. Understanding *when
and where* demand reduction (shared pain) can keep the systems
under-stressed. Rolling blackouts are a top-down imposition of
this. Human nature has *some* people upping their consumption in
a very "hoarding-like" style... as if running your house furnace
at 80F until the natural gas pressure or electric grid fails will
give you more than perhaps an extra half-hour of comfort while
increasing the chances of a failure significantly? I have been
known (in my youth) to drive faster when I was afraid I was going
to run out of gas before the next refueling opportunity.
What went wrong with the Texas power grid? https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Wholesale-power-prices-spiking-across-Texas-15951684.php I haven't verified the information in the following tweet. But it's interesting. https://twitter.com/amberwbooker/status/1361495140519587844?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThe next time you vote, just remember that ERCOT (Texas' electrical grid) refuses to become part of the national electrical grid to avoid federal regulatory oversight. There are only three electrical grids in the contiguous United States - the Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and ERCOT. The interconnectedness of the former is why places iwth much harsher winters than Texas don't experience the same types of outages. S many pe9ple ar literally freezing to death tonight because we live in a state that resents a fundamental tenet of federalism and is still salty about he Confederacy losing the Civil War.
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