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I have wondered if the US actually did detect a powerful storm incoming and we had say 6-hours of warning could we temporarily shutdown the US power grid to prevent catastrophic damage to that grid? Or would the powers in charge spend all that time arguing about who was in charge and what to do?

brovane wrote: ↑Tue Jan 06, 2026 4:04 pm I have wondered if the US actually did detect a powerful storm incoming and we had say 6-hours of warning could we temporarily shutdown the US power grid to prevent catastrophic damage to that grid? Or would the powers in charge spend all that time arguing about who was in charge and what to do?

yes. procedures in place and practiced.

(perhaps not everywhere but we had that scoped out)

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 07, 2026 1:07 am

brovane wrote: ↑Tue Jan 06, 2026 4:04 pm I have wondered if the US actually did detect a powerful storm incoming and we had say 6-hours of warning could we temporarily shutdown the US power grid to prevent catastrophic damage to that grid? Or would the powers in charge spend all that time arguing about who was in charge and what to do?

yes. procedures in place and practiced.

(perhaps not everywhere but we had that scoped out)

That is good, hopefully we never have to find out. I cannot image turning everything off and then having to blackstart the US national grid.

brovane wrote: ↑Wed Jan 07, 2026 1:36 am

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 07, 2026 1:07 am

brovane wrote: ↑Tue Jan 06, 2026 4:04 pm I have wondered if the US actually did detect a powerful storm incoming and we had say 6-hours of warning could we temporarily shutdown the US power grid to prevent catastrophic damage to that grid? Or would the powers in charge spend all that time arguing about who was in charge and what to do?

yes. procedures in place and practiced.

(perhaps not everywhere but we had that scoped out)

That is good, hopefully we never have to find out. I cannot image turning everything off and then having to blackstart the US national grid.

if we ever have to do that, it will not be fun. Restarting plants and grids will be quite the process.

brovane wrote: ↑Tue Jan 06, 2026 4:04 pm I have wondered if the US actually did detect a powerful storm incoming and we had say 6-hours of warning could we temporarily shutdown the US power grid to prevent catastrophic damage to that grid? Or would the powers in charge spend all that time arguing about who was in charge and what to do?

The BBC did a 'what if' about 15?? years ago with this scenario. There was as you say a lot of bickering but one plucky plant manager did the right thing by himself and saved part of New York IIRC.

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 07, 2026 1:07 am

brovane wrote: ↑Tue Jan 06, 2026 4:04 pm I have wondered if the US actually did detect a powerful storm incoming and we had say 6-hours of warning could we temporarily shutdown the US power grid to prevent catastrophic damage to that grid? Or would the powers in charge spend all that time arguing about who was in charge and what to do?

yes. procedures in place and practiced.

(perhaps not everywhere but we had that scoped out)

PG&E routinely does that for weather events so their shoddy infrastructure doesn’t result in another fire.

The flip side is to what extent people who have on-site generators or off-grid solar/battery capacity will be impacted and need to deenergize. That would be a much more complicated evolution to communicate and coordinate, since it’s orders of magnitude more players to reach.

There’s also the question of what if anything can still remain powered up, since we have lots of personal and social critical infrastructure that requires electricity to function.