The Hidden Fragility of our Electric Grid Let me start this email by expressing my hope that this pandemic resolves quickly and with as few deaths as possible. So far, Vermont has not been heavily affected. However, our children live in New York and New Jersey, areas which are suffering with this disease. With the current dangers to our world and our family, I find it hard to concentrate on my book Shorting the Grid. Nevertheless, a reliable electric grid is essential for anything we do, including fighting a pandemic. When Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal was sick with COVID, she wrote a column that included these words: There are a million warnings out there on a million serious things. We add one: Everything works—and will continue to work—as long as we have electricity. It’s what keeps the lights on, the oxygen flowing, the information going. Everything is the grid, the grid, the grid. Noonan is correct. Even if we fall into a major recession at the end of the COVID pandemic, we will still need a reliable grid. I tell myself that my work on the grid book is worthwhile. I do my best to concentrate.
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