How does modern electricity systems work and what are some theories about the future of power?

You might look at real life power outage examples for ideas to build on. One example Northeast blackout of 2003

Electricity is produced by generators, and boosted or reduced by transformers; no pumps involved. It is transmitted via wires, and the routing is controlled by switches, relays, and software. When the power goes down, it’s very feasible that the cause of the problem is 500 miles away.

One big scale Northeast blackout was caused by a 79 cent relay. If you want more drama, go to the source, where the generators are: like a dam or windmill farm. Sabotage, bombs blowing them up, etc.

Hm. See I was basing most of my understanding from the Jurassic Park movie haha. In case you don’t recall the entire park has a blackout. So one of the characters ends up going to where the generators are and manually resetting it.

My understanding is that to prevent the entire power grid going down in a cascading failure, utility companies are installing “smart” systems that will isolate “micro grids” from the power network, should power become interrupted, rerouting generating sources around the failed source. I suspect that technology will be greatly advanced in the next few hundred years, and electrical energy will be generated for neighborhoods, if not for individual homes and businesses.

Currently research is looking at means to generate electricity from fuel cells using methane and the oxygen in the air. Pilot projects already exist, providing electrical power for manufacturing companies using this method. My science fiction scenario uses high frequency electromagnetic energy to combine carbon dioxide and methane to generate electricity with pure carbon and water as the byproduct. Part of this carbon is then oxidized and hydrolyzed to restore depleted CO2 and CH4.

If it’s an on-site power plant, then mice made a nest in a control panel, chewed through some wiring, and started a fire that melted the circuitry.

It takes thousands of people in constant communication working together to bring the grid back online provided there are not major problems. A handful of old hydro power plants (dams) have “house units” that can provide power to give the generators voltage to initially run their exciters before they can be put on line. That’s enough to start a rudimentary grid. Even though it’s not publicized or even really known outside of certain circles we are in the process of hardening the grid. There is no “reset button” for the grid. It’s our Achillies heel. If it goes down completely—WE. ARE. FUCKED.

The grid is a horrible scheme for power with so many single points of failure. IMO the grid needs to be set up like the internet where local problems have little or no effect to the rest of the system. With generation and transmission broken up and local we can use power generation that makes the most sense for where it’s being used. If we lost the grid that’ll be what we end up replacing it with because it’ll be years before we get things in order again.

Former Navy electrician here….

Various systems work quite differently.

One thing all electrical systems have in common is that all get their electricity from some sort of generator (solar panel, nuclear reactor, hydroelectric turbine…) and distribute it to remote locations. How many locations, how remote those locations are, and how much redundancy is in the system are where things vary.

The regular power grid we have to get power from that serves our homes is a pretty crap system with many weakpoints, little redundancy, and it would be pretty easy to take out. On the other hand, the electrical system of a Navy ship…. well, those never have to send power more than about ¼ mile, but you can take out pretty much any part of a carrier’s electrical system and the guys in E-Div can restore power within minutes. But that sort of redundant system is costly to apply on a large scale, so it is highly unlikely that we will ever see that sort of robustness and fault-tolerance in any sort of national power grid.

But really, the system has enough generators and just enough redundancy that the only real way to take out the power grid in any way taht cannot be repaired withing a couple of weeks is an EMP pulse…. which has it’s own issues. An EMP pulse would cause anything that uses wound wire ;;(like a transformer, generator, or electric motor)—to generate a pretty massive power surge that would damage it and/or any attacked equipment.

Of course, it would also obliterate all solid-state electronics, and a EMP pulse big enough to take the system down for more than a month would generate similar voltages in anything that had a nervous system, so it’d fry all our brains.

@ARE_you_kidding_me There are also some that use self-exciters; small, auxiliary permanent magnet generators to flash the field.

If you want to take out the power grid, then your best route is to have the system dismantled for some reason, likely an economic one. The technology to build a highly fault-resistant electrical grid is pretty easy, but nothing kills technology like a lack of funding!

@jerv Yes, I am familiar with synchronous self-excited machines. I don’t think the bulk of our generators operate this way though. An EMP depending on how large would actually not be as devastating as people think. A good portion of our electronics and vehicles would still operate just fine. Many devices the most that would happen is you may need to power cycle them. The important stuff like the grid would be shut down but probably not destroyed. A more sustained e-m event like a solar flare could be a different story.

What concerns me more is sabotage or terrorism. A dozen or so individuals in key locations with common household items could easily bring the grid down. IMO we need security present at all major substations, like yesterday.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I am operating under the assumption that an EM event would be either solar (and thus huge) or an intentional thing done by those with the strategic savvy to make it devastating. Short of terrorist action, warfare, or massive solar activity, I can’t think of anything that would take out the system in any meaningful way for more than a few days.

As for self-excited generators, bear in mind the type of electrical system I am most intimately familiar with; one specifically designed to handle the sort of damage/abuse of combat situations under circumstances where no outside help or supplies are available. Emergency generators are all air-started, liberal distribution of casualty power terminals to reroute around damaged hull sections… overall a system with more failsafes than you’d see in a system built more for profitability than for survivability.

And that is why I think that economics plays a role. All of the backups and such that I am used to would cut into profits if the military were a business. Hell, even routine maintenance may even be considered too costly, thus leaving many systems potentially failure-prone simply due to neglect. With rising energy costs, I see a distinct possibility that our already somewhat shaky system will fail on it’s own simply due to lack of money.

Lastly, a funny anecdote.There was a substation near my in-law’s house that was taken out at least once a year by a squirrel shorting it out. You could hear the bang ¼ mile away as that entire end of town went dark. And every time, it was a flash-fried squirrel that blew it up. If a rodent can take out power to a couple thousand homes that easily and frequently, what does that tell you about that substation? And doesn’t that imply that the same thing is possible elsewhere? Squirrels are a bigger threat to our power grid than terrorists!