I do not really care about the latest US blackouts, this because it is a homemade problem and does not effect the rest of the world. Maybe the taste for some basic energy conservation will grow out of it and in this case the consequences might have a global positive result. It is however a technically interesting event and as such, I cannot resist to speculate about the cause.
The reason for this is that the politicians and energy companies now are scrambling for an excuse that they can sell to the public. The reality is that the government, congress, regulators and energy companies, all have failed to meet their responsibility to the public interest. The politicians have failed to set the rules for a working environment, the government neglected the problems and the corporations took risks in trying to maximize profits. The result is enormous cost for the tax payers and adding billions to the already most expensive administration in US history. It is more than 40 years ago I studied electric power generation & distribution in school, but the basic principles are still valid. To understand the basics of grid network design and traffic distribution, was however very useful in my many years involvement with computer network techniques. To understand the grid, I will try to give a very simplified description of how it works. Each components, from the transformer stations to the power plants, have minimum and maximum loads and automatic shut down in the case of overload. This is absolutely necessary equipment protection. In the case of transformer stations, it will be a local blackout and repair personnel will be sent out to deal with it. The modernization of the distribution system is mostly an upgrade to remote control of disconnection and connection of grid distribution points. To some extent it can be capacity upgrades and changes in architecture. The faulty common principles for operation policies of user equipment and the extensive energy waste in US, leads to unnecessary high and very predictable peak demands. The blackout came at a time of day, were peak demand could be predicted. We have seen this in California and many of us predicted that New York would be the next area that would suffer. I belive that the use of natural gas for electricity generation (prohibited by Nixon administration) and the current supply crises, it one of the major reasons for the massive blackout. Because of the current high prices for operation of natural gas electricity plants, the electricity suppliers want to operate them at a very high utilization and will not start up reserve capacity until the last moment. It is probably also a "play chicken" situation among the suppliers, to see which ones who get nervous and start up reserve generation. This leave everybody in a rush situation, when the peak demands come and with close to 90% utilization, it is urgent. Every time that a generation resource id added to the grid, it has to be started up and then "phased in", before its actual connection. "Phased in" is an adjustment of the generators AC (alternate current) to the AC of the grid. If it is not properly "phased in" at the connection, a power surge will occur. Once "phased in", the grid will keep the generators in phase. 40 years ago the generators was "phased in" manually and you could often see the flickers of the lights, when somebody did not do a perfect "phase in". Today it is unusual and most plants have automatic phase adjustments, it is however still possible to do premature connections to the grid. If it is in a hurry to get the generator on line, it can be connected with a less than perfect "phase in" to the AC of the grid and with a electricity surge as result. My bet is that since the grid generators at the occasion was running more than 90% utilization and the providers was scrambling to get more resources on line. In this situation, badly "phased in" resources were connected, with a power surge as result. This power surge released the automatic over load protection for an other power plant and they did emergency shut down. Once one station shut down, the utilization reaches a level that causes other stations to do emergency shut down, in three minutes 21 stations did automatic emergency shut down of grid connection and the "blackout" was a fact. Once the grid is down, it is a very time consuming exercise to start up. This because the loads have to be manually disconnected before the start can begin. Once when the loads are down to the capacity of one power plant, the grid can start and then adding of more plants and distribution points. 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