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Friday, July 19th, 2019

Revenge of the Power Grid

Author:     Ian Bogost
Source:     The Atlantic
Publication Date:     JUL 15, 2019
 Link: Revenge of the Power Grid
Stephan:   Most American cities operate on an infrastructure that was basically created 100 years ago, or more. But few think about this reality, and even fewer talk about it. For decades both Democrats and Republican administrations have put off bringing their infrastructure into the 21st century. And now, as climate change creates more and more stress on these aging systems they are failing.

New York City during power outage
Credit: David Dee/Getty

Infrastructure is everything you don’t think about. The roads you drive on. The rigs and refineries that turn fossil fuel into the gas that makes your car go. The electricity that powers the streetlights and lamps that guide your way. All these technologies vanish into the oblivion of normalcy.

Until they break. Then everyone notices.

That’s what happened Saturday night in New York City when a power outage struck Midtown Manhattan, from Hell’s Kitchen north to Lincoln Center and from Fifth Avenue west to the Hudson River. The blackout darkened the huge, electric billboards of Times Square, forced Broadway shows to cancel performances, and even disabled some subway lines.

According to reports, the outage was caused by a transformer fire within the affected region. Power was fully restored by early the following morning. It was not the first or the most severe blackout to hit the Big Apple—another took out the whole city on the same date in 1977, and yet another struck in the […]

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