Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said yesterday. Texas Tribune reports: As millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or…
Tag: Power Grid
Who’s Actually To Blame For the Texas Power Disaster?
With millions of Texans still without power in the wake of a winter storm and frigid temperatures, everyone is looking for someone to blame. From a report, shared by a reader: Many Democrats are blaming Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for failing to adequately prepare for the storm. Many conservatives are blaming the environmental movement — insisting that frozen wind turbines show…
Spacewalkers complete 4 years of power upgrades for station
A pair of spacewalking astronauts completed a four-year effort to modernize the International Space Station’s power grid on Monday, installing one last battery. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-spacewalkers-years-power-station.html…
Microsoft, SolarWinds Face New Criticism Over Russian Breach of US Networks
After Russia’s massive breach of both government and private networks in the U.S., American intelligence officials “have expressed anger that Microsoft did not detect the attack earlier But new criticisms are also falling on SolarWinds: Some of the compromised SolarWinds software was engineered in Eastern Europe, and American investigators are now examining whether the incursion originated there, where Russian intelligence operatives…
What are coronal mass ejections?
Coronal mass ejections – CMEs for short – are powerful eruptions near the surface of the sun that can ripple through our solar system and can interrupt satellites and power grids on Earth. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/what-are-coronal-mass-ejections…
‘How 30 Lines of Code Blew Up a 27-Ton Generator’
After the U.S. unveiled charges against six members of the Sandworm unit in Russia’s military intelligence agency, Wired re-visited “a secret experiment in 2007 proved that hackers could devastate power grid equipment beyond repair — with a file no bigger than a gif.” It’s an excerpt from the new book SANDWORM: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the…
Russians Who Pose Election Threat Have Hacked Nuclear Plants and Power Grid
The New York Times reports:
Cybersecurity officials watched with growing alarm in September as Russian state hackers started prowling around dozens of American state and local government computer systems just two months before the election. The act itself did not worry them so much — officials anticipated that the Russians who interfered in the 2016 election would be back — but the…
Can we predict large solar flares?
Solar storms pose risks for society, but more accurate space weather forecasts may be coming soon. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/can-we-predict-large-solar-flares-kasano-interview…
Earth’s magnetic field may change faster than we thought
A long-standing question has been how fast Earth’s magnetic field can change. The authors of a new study say they’ve uncovered some answers. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/earths-magnetic-field-change-faster-thought…
Microsoft Used Hydrogen Fuel Cells To Power a Data Center For Two Days Straight
Microsoft announced Monday that hydrogen fuel cells powered a row of its datacenter servers for 48 consecutive hours, bringing the company one step closer toward its goal of becoming “carbon negative” by 2030. Engadget reports: The idea to explore hydrogen fuel cells originated in 2018, when researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO used a proton exchange membrane…