Blackouts: a sociology of electrical power failure (original) (raw)

Blackout. What happens when the power goes off?

2014

It powers water purification, waste, food, transportation, security and communication systems. Life in modern society is impossible to imagine without it. This article looks at what happens when the power goes off, scrutinizing the social consequences of electrical power cuts.

Electrical blackouts: a systemic problem

Issues in Science …, 2004

About every four months, the United States experiences a black-out large enough to darken half a million homes. As long ago as 1965, a massive blackout in New York captured the nation's attention and started remedial action. But that was almost 40 years ago, and still we have ...

Metropolis of Darkness and the Politics of Urban Electricity Grids Eric Verdeil

Despite massive investments in infrastructure reconstruction, Beirut has never fully recovered 24/7 provision of electricity after the civil war (1975-90). Since 2006, the consequences of Israeli bombings and of infrastructure decaying in a context of political bickering preventing new investments plans have worsened the situation. On average, electricity is currently supplied only half of the day. Building on Timothy Mitchell's project to follow the tracks of energy in order to unravel the precarious agencies of power that allow its flows to circulate, I try to map the disruptions and reconfigurations of energy circuits and to show that it both reflect existing configurations of power in the city and create new ones. (Mitchell 2011) At a first glance, uneven access to electricity might well be understood as the way to reproduce social and political domination between central Beirut and its suburbs and between the wealthiest and the middle and lower class, for which the cost of making without public network is very heavy. But seen from Mitchell's perspective, the economic arrangements and the technological devices needed to run the system and for the electricity being generated and processed contain in themselves their fragilities that allow such domination to be constantly challenged by the clients-users-citizens or newcomers like informal vendors of alternative electricity devices (the famous generators). Thus, one might well read the rising protests against the current state of blackness in Beirut as new agencies of power that seek to undermine and derail the symbolical hierarchies of power (here I will analyse cartoons and the Minister of Energy bashing on the social networks), despite the constant struggle by the political class to reenact them through sectarian cleavages. Hooking and meter-pirating, as well as non-payment, display the power of the network's end-users. The development of private illegal-but-tolerated generators involves the building of new local configuration of power.

Electricity blackouts and hybrid systems of provision: Users and the 'reflective practice'

2013

Background: Interest in the role of the user has provided promising insights when considering the transition towards more decentralised forms of energy provision. There is, however, a shortage of analysis on the reflexivity and learning of ‘regular’ users and their understandings, competences and meanings attached to energy use practices. This paper analyses discontinuities and disruptions in domestic heating during long blackouts and whether power failures could serve as an entry point to the transition dynamics of the practice. Methods: The study is based on six in-depth interviews on understandings, meanings, materials and competences attached to power cuts with households living in detached houses having different wood-based hybrid systems of energy provision. The interviews were conducted in a rural Finnish municipality, which faced power cuts lasting from 7 h to 6 days in January 2011. Results: The reactions of the interviewed households to power cuts indicate that blackouts activate unused skills and resources, propose uncommon meanings for electricity and heat and revive dormant elements of practice. Resilience of practice was achieved by flexibility in terms of convenience. However, power cuts were not found to cause explicit, persistent changes in heating practices. Conclusions: It is argued that disruptions sensitise consumers to the perception of sovereignty and that resilience building and the capability to adjust bring new perspectives to the discussions of the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of hybrid systems of heat provision.

IJERT-Power Blackout: A Black Day in North India (Power Outage in 2012)

International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT), 2019

https://www.ijert.org/Power-Blackout:-A-Black-Day-in-North-India-(Power-Outage-in-2012) https://www.ijert.org/research/Power-Blackout-A-Black-Day-in-North-India-(Power-Outage-in-2012)-IJERTCONV7IS08045.pdf Modern life is impossible to visualize without electricity. Every segment of modern society is largely dependent on power from domestic, farming and industrial to service and governmental operations, all require electricity and energy to function, without which the world, regardless of a specific sector, would come to a standstill. It starts by identifying the reasons for power blackout. They are more fatal than are commonly assumed. The disagreement is made that they are getting vulnerable.

Social vulnerability to long-duration power outages

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2023

Although long-duration power outages can lead to significant damages to the local economy, the human catastrophe that can potentially unfold due to the failure of essential services can far outweigh the financial damages incurred. Furthermore, power outages do not impact individuals equally, and access to proper resources (or lack thereof) can significantly affect how individuals deal with long-duration outages. Various socioeconomic and demographic characteristics have been shown in the literature to correlate with increased health risks, levels of power outage preparedness, and willingness and means to evacuate if necessary. This highlights the need to identify socially vulnerable groups and communities so that during such events information, assistance, and resources can be provided in a more targeted manner. This study presents a threedimensional metric of social vulnerability to quantify the degree to which a person's life or livelihood is put at risk by a long-duration power outage. Dimensions of vulnerability include health, preparedness, and evacuation. Principal component analysis and an L2 norm model are applied to produce a single metric for each of the three dimensions of vulnerability. These three scores are then aggregated using Pareto ranking to determine an overall vulnerability score. A case study is presented for the state of Colorado using data from the 2020 US Census as well as other relevant federal and state datasets. The index put forth in this paper can be used by power utilities and other federal, state, or local authorities to plan and manage their operations during longduration power outages in a more equitable way.

"Flex Your Power:" Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid

2006

In response to widespread power outages, rolling blackouts, and ubiquitous energy debates, this essay considers our relation to energy and the grid that produces it. First, we investigate California’s multimedia Flex Your Power campaign, which defines consumers as nodes of the grid to emphasize their responsibility to maintain a stable energy supply. Second, we examine state and national responses to the 2003 blackout in the Northeastern United States, attending to three strategies through which grid administrators sought to impose order, enact hierarchy, and deindividuate power. We propose that the grid invokes personalization at the “local” level and abstraction at the national level. These contradictory (but overlapping) narratives show a complex, nuanced set of relations between human society and mechanized processes of power distribution.