America has over 3,000 utilities, not one. There is no authority in the US which can order “disconnect these 50 lines in these 12 states” in a 20 minute window.
This doesn’t sound right to me. The relevant level of institution here is grid operator, not utility, and eight grid operators cover most of the US. Either way, any electrical grid has an institution that manages the grid in real time and responds to incidents like shortages and natural disasters. I don’t see how the NZ plan as described falls outside the standard toolkit of whoever is managing the grid, though of course they would need to form a solar storm plan ahead of time.
Yeah you’re right about this, my bad. I edited the post accordingly. Thanks!
So the bottleneck to an NZ style plan (which works for strong but not dramatic storms, like the 2024 Gannon) is data; there’s no centralized data collection mechanism like the kiwis set up, and we also have far fewer GIC sensors per capita. What New Zealand did is rack up that data over two decades to then have good rerouting simulation maps they were able to execute in 2024. The 3,000 utilities figure is relevant because installing GIC sensors and centralizing data is a matter for them, not the grid operators.
Very cool research overall!
This doesn’t sound right to me. The relevant level of institution here is grid operator, not utility, and eight grid operators cover most of the US. Either way, any electrical grid has an institution that manages the grid in real time and responds to incidents like shortages and natural disasters. I don’t see how the NZ plan as described falls outside the standard toolkit of whoever is managing the grid, though of course they would need to form a solar storm plan ahead of time.
Yeah you’re right about this, my bad. I edited the post accordingly. Thanks!
So the bottleneck to an NZ style plan (which works for strong but not dramatic storms, like the 2024 Gannon) is data; there’s no centralized data collection mechanism like the kiwis set up, and we also have far fewer GIC sensors per capita. What New Zealand did is rack up that data over two decades to then have good rerouting simulation maps they were able to execute in 2024. The 3,000 utilities figure is relevant because installing GIC sensors and centralizing data is a matter for them, not the grid operators.