Resilient Utilities Now

What’s The Threat? Every day, the US electric grid, our keystone critical infrastructure, could suddenly suffer damage that could affect the entire US and take months or even years to repair. As a report by The National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) said in 2018, “Significant public and private action is needed to prepare for and recover from a catastrophic outage that could leave large parts of the nation without power for weeks or months, and cause service failures in other sectors— including water and wastewater, communications, transportation, healthcare, and financial services—that are critical to public health and safety and our national and economic security. In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid—through starvation, disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 90% of the American population. NIAC found that existing national plans, response resources, and coordination strategies would be outmatched by a catastrophic power outage. Efforts to anticipate and prevent such threats have gotten bogged down by gridlock and misplaced priorities at the Federal level, and lack of popular awareness and demand at the state and local level (where most utilities are managed and regulated). We’re no better prepared than we were for 9/11 or COVID-19. And the consequences to society could be worse. A New Approach We at Resilient Utilities Now are taking a different approach, one that relies on ordinary citizens to get involved and help protect their own communities without waiting helplessly for their state or Federal representatives to lead the way. Specifically, we plan to start by mobilizing local citizens to become activists to advocate that any public purpose microgrid have a small portion of its budget set aside to protect against these threats.