ELI5, how can an electrical grid be “minutes away” from month long blackouts? What would’ve happened that devoted employees avoided?

Question

I’ve seen lots of posts lately on Texas being “minutes and seconds away” from months long blackouts. What could’ve happened, what was avoided that caused that?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

They don’t. It’s bullshit.

There have been multiple failures like that, none have taken out the grid for months.

Just going down the list of [cascading power failures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure) in wikipedia:

Blackout in Northeast America in 1965 – 13 hours
Blackout in Southern Brazil in 1999 – 4 hours
Blackout in Northeast America in 2003 – 4 days in some places
Blackout in Italy in 2003 – 12 hours
Blackout in London in 2003 – 2 hours
European Blackout in 2006 – 2 hours
Blackout in Northern India in 2012 – 2 days
Blackout in South Australia in 2016 – 1 day
Blackout in southeast South America in 2019 – 2 days