Examining the causes of power outages, from system damage to preventative measures

A look at how power is restored after an outage on the electric grid

From minor system failures to more widespread blackouts, crews begin by assessing damage done to infrastructure, such as transmission towers and distribution power lines. Prioritizing essential services, such as hospitals, crews then begin restoration, starting with any damage found closest to the power generation and working down the distribution system to customers.

Learn how critical services, infrastructure, and people would be impacted by a US-scale blackout—a nationwide, long-term failure of the electric grid.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

Simulate the effects of changing supply and demand on the electric grid

In this application, users can modify the demand of fictional cities and the supply of various generators, including a nuclear power plant and a wind farm, which can be disconnected from the grid. Notice that current may flow into or out of external systems to compensate for available generation. See what it takes to cause a blackout in different cities or shut down the entire grid.

During emergencies, backup diesel generators in data centers emit substantial pollution

During power outages or when the power grid is at insufficient capacity, these generators emit 200 to 600 times more nitrogen oxides—a greenhouse gas—than natural gas plants, as well as fine particulate matter linked to respiratory disease.

Why is hydropower important when other power sources go dark?

Hydropower can ramp up, recoup shortfalls, and stabilize the grid nearly instantaneously. A new study quantifies the energy source’s contribution to grid stability.

The benefits and risks of smart grids, from improved efficiency to cybersecurity risks

By using a network of devices, including digital meters, sensors, and controllers, smart grids can quickly detect mechanical issues and fluctuations in supply and demand, automatically adjusting electricity flow to prevent cascading failures. While this is important for variable solar and wind power generation, many of these computer systems are designed to be controlled remotely, which increases the risk of malicious access.

More batteries in the power grid would create an on-demand energy reservoir

Most power grids are inefficient because they require enough generation capacity at all times to avoid blackouts. This means at any given time, as much as 50% of generating capacity at power plants can go unused. Batteries would reduce this inefficiency and allow for real-time adjustments.

Understanding the power grid and how renewable sources fit in

The power grid is evolving to include ever-higher levels of solar and wind, which don't provide inertia. Should system planners and operators panic?

How microgrids can modernize electric grids to meet 21st-century demands

Just as having a single, outdated internet service provider leaves an area helpless in the case of an outage, failures in the electric grid can be devastating to communities. For this reason, hospitals, data centers, and other structures have their own backup power supplies. However, decentralized microgrids would provide areas with their own electricity generation and storage, thereby reducing overall grid load and reliance while enabling better electricity management.

View a map of the balancing authorities managing electric systems and costs throughout the continental US

These are made up of utilities, Power Marketing Administrations—hydropower marketers from the Department of Energy—and groups of utilities that have formed regional entities called Regional Transmission Organizations or Independent System Operators. Collectively, balancing authorities ensure supply meets demand and can direct utilities to implement rolling blackouts to prevent permanent damage to electrical equipment.

Learn why electrical substations are needed to provide safe electricity with minimal energy loss

These typically fenced-off facilities with steel boxes or cylinders topped with cone-like caps house circuit breakers, fuses, and switches that can isolate sections of the grid to prevent electrical failures from spreading. Substations use transformers to modify electrical voltage and are customized to the generation, transmission, and distribution networks they interconnect.

Minor technology failures can spiral into massive internet outages

A mix of centralized cloud infrastructure and legacy protocols leaves the internet susceptible to downtime from minor cyberattacks or software bugs, infrastructure damage caused by extreme weather, and human error if a DNS service provider—the internet's phone book—or a backend system, such as Amazon Web Services, were compromised.

The engineering underlying the electric grid and why it needs to be modernized

The system includes generators for producing electricity and millions of miles of transmission and distribution lines to transport the energy. The substantial increase in the number of electronic devices and electrical demand since the construction of much of the grid in the mid-1900s has strained infrastructure, requiring continuous upgrades and massive investments in new construction.

The unpredictability and brevity of lightning make lightning power impractical

While a typical lightning strike provides 30,000 amps at 300 million volts, the bolt only lasts about 30 microseconds. If the electrical surge could be captured—assuming one knew beforehand where it would strike—it would only provide enough electricity to power one home for about 6.4 hours.

Understanding how non-profit entities manage electric grids to ensure supply-demand balance

Independent System Operators in smaller areas and Regional Transmission Organizations that operate across multiple states run wholesale electricity markets. Electricity suppliers can submit competitive bids to meet estimated demand in day-ahead markets while keeping consumer costs low. ISOs and RCOs also inform markets of deviations in these estimates so that suppliers can adjust how much power they generate, which is then bought and sold in real time.

Space weather phenomena, including solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar wind, are driven by the sun's magnetic field and can affect Earth's ground- and space-based technological systems.

Electric grids that rely on solar power must compensate for reduced electricity generation during solar eclipses.

The history of the North American power grid, which is composed of five major grids

Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station was the first US commercial power plant, burning coal to power lamps for some Manhattan residents. Over time, local power plants would be bought out by larger ones, forming interconnected systems spanning multiple states. Today, the Eastern Interconnection and Western Interconnection are the largest of these systems.

Discover why Texas runs its own electric grid, separate from the other US interconnections

In 1935, electrical utilities in the Lone Star State opted to rely on the state's own fossil fuel reserves to power an independent electric grid. While this prevented the federal oversight required for the Eastern and Western Interconnections that span multiple states, it also meant Texas's grid was unable to draw sufficient backup power during the winter 2021 power grid failure.

As much as 10% of home electricity use comes from unused devices left plugged in.

Why decarbonizing the entire electric grid is impossible with its current infrastructure

Fossil fuel plants can be built anywhere and have thus typically been built near highly populated areas, such as coastal cities, where electricity demand is high. However, certain renewable resources operate most efficiently in specific regions, such as wind turbines in the Midwest, and therefore require substantial transmission infrastructure to be constructed to transport the generated electricity.

Fluorescent bulbs can be illuminated by overhead power lines without making contact

The electromagnetic fields produced by the alternating current in transmission lines can induce the motion of charges in nearby objects. This motion yields electric currents that can light up bulbs but are too small to harm humans.

Electricity can be lethal because it can disrupt the nervous system, which controls critical bodily functions that rely on electrical signals between cells, such as breathing and heart rate.

Being struck by lightning has a mortality rate of about 10%

Near-immediate deaths are the result of electrical disruptions in the heart and nervous system, causing cardiac arrest, but severe skin burns, temporary paralysis, and blown eardrums are more common. About 74% of survivors are left with a long-term disability, which includes brain damage and changes in memory and mood.

View breakdowns of the world's and each nation's electricity comes from

These charts show how the shares of generated electricity sources—solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, bioenergy, oil, gas, and coal—have changed since 1985. Since 2010, an increase in renewable sources has offset the share lost by nuclear and fossil fuels.

Tesla's alternating current power's most of the world's electric grids

In 1879, Thomas Edison’s light bulb relied on direct current, but such currents can't efficiently transmit power over long distances. Nikola Tesla introduced alternating current, which feature far fewer energy loses. Despite Edison’s attempts to discredit AC, Tesla proved its efficiency by lighting the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Watch a timeline of the history of electricity, from observations of static electricity in antiquity to the War of the Currents—a rivalry to establish the ideal system for electric grids.

Establishing the wind power grid required incentives, reliability, and affordability

Although wind was harnessed to generate electricity for individual buildings in the late 1800s, high costs, mechanical issues with turbines, and better fossil-fuel alternatives delayed wind power's widespread growth. After the oil crises of the 1970s, governments sought alternative energy sources and, in the decades that followed, provided tax credits to expand the wind power market.

All clean energy technologies rely heavily on critical minerals

Although many of these minerals have been used for decades, such as copper in electrical wiring, the accelerating demand for them has strained existing extraction and processing systems. Supply chain disruptions for these materials may delay and increase the cost of transitioning to solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal power.

There are no outdoor locations that are safe from lightning

If your hair stands up amid an approaching storm, seek shelter immediately, as a local buildup of charge imbalance precedes cloud-to-ground lightning. If you are stuck outside, move to a lower altitude, such as a valley or ravine, and avoid open fields, water, and isolated tall objects. Do not lie down or crouch.

Utility companies are often considered 'natural' monopolies, which occur in industries where the upfront costs of entering the market are high, making competition unrealistic.

Data from 2020 suggests that fossil fuels are the most dangerous and least clean energy sources, causing the most deaths and emitting the most greenhouse gases per unit of energy generated.

View a breakdown of global electricity generation in 2025, led by coal power plants.

Solar energy alone can fully power the world if transmission hurdles can be resolved

When light strikes a photovoltaic cell, electrons are loosened, which travel through a circuit where the energy can be used. Distributing energy from high solar intensity regions and storing energy for non-daylight hours is logistically challenging and costly.

Most commercial planes get struck by lightning multiple times a year

This piece explains why commercial aircraft rarely crash in thunderstorms, detailing how pilots use onboard radar, shared reports, and strict avoidance protocols to navigate storms that look far more dangerous on screen than in reality.

Being near a lightning strike—even without getting struck—can be fatal

Because animal tissue is generally more conductive than soil, electricity moving along Earth's surface after a strike tends to travel up and back down an animal's legs, discharging dangerous amounts of energy along the way, with risks increasing the farther apart the legs are. This ground current accounts for about half of all lightning-related deaths and injuries in humans.

Larger shares of solar power generation produce larger energy demand curves

Because solar energy is only available during daylight hours, transitioning an electric grid to solar requires significant ramp-ups and ramp-downs of other energy sources during mornings and evenings to compensate. Widespread adoption of affordable energy storage solutions can soften these curves.

Lightning may kill as many as 320 million trees each year

Ignoring the effects of tree loss resulting from lightning-induced wildfires, researchers at the Technical University of Munich developed a quantitative model to estimate the loss of these organisms due to cloud-to-ground strikes, based on global lightning data and forest structure. They expect the estimate to rise due to increased strikes resulting from climate change.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Smart cities without strong cybersecurity can leave utilities extremely vulnerable

Insecure devices connected to the Internet of Things pose risks to the entire network, which cybercriminals can hijack to compromise infrastructure and private resident data. Poorly secured systems that become inoperable can undermine the promise of smart cities by worsening the quality of life.

Some online users believe gravity will 'switch off' for 7 seconds in August 2026

Conspiracy theorists believe NASA is preparing for the gravity blackout under a classified operation called "Project Anchor." They speculate that the purpose of the secret project is to test whether Earth can survive such an event. NASA has rejected the claim. Considering the physics of a gravity blackout, the outcome would likely be chaotic but not total destruction.

The impacts of the solar maximum on Earth, from telecommunications to auroras

During the peak of the sun's 11-year cycle, plasma emissions stronger than the average stream of particles from the sun can compress and distort the Earth's magnetic field, allowing auroras to be seen farther from the poles. Distortions in the ionized layer of Earth's atmosphere can also alter the path of communication transmissions through the air. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Some scientists hypothesize that stressed rocks can discharge built-up static electricity in the form of lightning—a phenomenon known as fracto-luminescence, or earthquake lights.

Wind farms are targets for conspiracy theories due to their visibility and complexity

The proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding wind farms is driven by deep-seated anxieties about change, distrust of government, and resistance to confronting the complexities of modern energy solutions.

Maintenance, curtailment, congestion, and wind speed can park a wind turbine

Wind turbines are optimized to operate at wind speeds between about 10 and 80 kph, but an internal brake stops them if energy is not required. Routine preventative maintenance and cleaning also prevent blades from rotating.

View the various types of lightning

The most common form of lightning involves channels of electricity between oppositely charged regions within a cloud or between two clouds to reestablish electrostatic equilibrium. While cloud-to-ground lightning is understood best, research is ongoing to fully model the mechanisms behind rarer forms of lightning, such as transient luminous events.

Lightning rods provide a conductive pathway to safely steer massive electric currents

The device is positioned higher above the ground to "catch" one of the many branching filaments of electrons from clouds before they make contact with other surface structures, which have been induced to have a positive charge by overhead storm clouds. The current is then sent to a conductive grid buried underground.

Despite electric usage concerns, EV charging accounts for less than 1% of grid load

Other popular myths about EVs include battery failure concerns—failure rates are less than 1% on newer models—and that there are no places to charge cars, though both at-home outlets and more than 77,000 stations on the road are available.

Could the world's largest solar storm happen again?

In 1859, the world witnessed the most intense solar storm in recorded history. The electromagnetic deluge of dust and gas lit up the night sky and sparked fires, disrupting Earth's magnetic field and putting on a show for the millions. If a storm with a similar intensity today occurred, scientists believe it would be catastrophic for our communications systems. Learn what would happen if the Carrington Event happened again here.