The end of the electric grid is coming. There are books written about it. And, not all of them are fiction. Some are based on the cascading blackouts that have happened. Others about an EMP pulse from a solar flare or nuke. Take your pick, there’s a book out there.

You see there are 3 electric grids in the US: East, West, and Texas.

And while there are utilities working to minimize the damage and contain the domino effect of a cascade failure, the area potentially effected could be catastrophic. Direct damage notwithstanding, when hurricanes damaged Texas and Louisiana, the disruption to the flow of oil/fuel to our power plants could knock even more generators out of commission, leaving more folks without power.

To protect our grid, we should look into local generation of power:  the most independent sources being solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal ( and possibly terragen). Provided the EMP isn’t global, the systems should be able to isolate their communities, in effect stopping the domino effect by removing a domino here and there. It may even help to restore power to affected areas faster, depending on the cause. To jump start competition, we just stop subsidizing the oil, gas, coal industries. Heck, we’d probably come out billions of dollars ahead, and not just because of the bill from these millstone industries.

Of course, there’s the jobs created as capitalism generates competition, jobs would be localized to maintain the infrastructure, schools and businesses could sell their excess energy to keep their operating costs down. Lastly, with everyone owning their energy, their power can’t be shut off and given to someone else because of their socio/economic status.

Yes, I can envision a world where electric companies can ‘see’ where your power is spent via computer chips in your appliances. Imagine the number of fridges and TVs fried by an odd power surge, aiding the designed obsolesce already built in. Imagine life-giving equipment being cut off, not forever, just long enough to kill those dependent on the machines or to impair a witness, preventing them from testifying.

Who knows, maybe the microwave will actually spy on us. Alexa already has. And let’s face it, the toaster oven has always been a bit off:D

Until next time!