2019 NYC POWER FAILURE HIGHLIGHTS TRANSFORMERS REQUIRED FOR A WAR
Before we push the button, we better be sure we can solve the electrical transformer problem. Updated on 7/16/2019.
Soon after I published Figure 1 of my article about the New York power blackout of 2019 my favorite DoD readers reminded me that in 2017 I posted a substantial article about North Korean plans to destroy our transformers. Thanks DoD. This article combines what we have learned and see in the new matrix in 2019 with the matrices and lessons of 2017. Also I just learned that we may have an EMP grenade, which means that North Korea could also have sought such a weapon and used it in New York.
The New York mayor was quick to say that the 2019 blackout was not an attack - so fast that he said it at the same time that the power company was telling us that they didn't know the cause (still true days later). Two transformers had exploded at the same time, but why? Because the U.S. and Iran are currently exchanging cyber-attacks Iran must be a suspect. North Korea is also struggling under our sanctions. On Figure 1 the axis term is ELECTRICITY LOST. IRAN shares a letter alef with ELECTRICITY LOST. On the full 864-letter matrix it had about one chance in three to be there, but it only had about one chance in 313 to be in 65 letters with it highlighted in grey. The full matrix also has KOREA at skip +1 against odds of about 118 to 1.
FIGURE 1 above: The axis term is ELECTRICITY/Power LOST, The spreadsheet showing the odds against Figure 1 are given below.
While the match between ELECTRICITY/POWER LOST and IRAN was noteworthy, there was no mention of New York. Where I live in Cape Canaveral, Florida we probably get about one power failure per year though rarely for more than an hour in length unless a hurricane is involved. To try to link this particular power loss with New York I looked for the date. The Hebrew year (5779) for this part of 2019 is encoded a skip of +3 but it had about 19.6% chance to be found this way at a non-special case skip. The most significant a priori term found was TRANSFORMER. It was found against odds of about 27.6 to 1. YOUR ENEMIES actually overlay but had one more letter than TRANSFORMER. It was found in the open text against odds of about 16.5 to 1.
Officials of Con Edison, which operates the city’s power grid, said there was “a significant electrical transmission disturbance” at 6:47 p.m. on Saturday (July 13) that left 72,000 of its customers on the West Side of Manhattan without power until late into the night. But they provided scant insight into the underlying cause of the failure, which came on the 42nd anniversary of one of the most infamous blackouts in the city’s history. In fact, Con Edison was warning about possible addition power failures soon with another expected hot weekend ahead. There were disagreements about a 13,000-volt power cable that caught fire, but on Sunday, company President Timothy Cawley had called the idea of tying the incident to the failed cable “sort of a non-starter.” He also argued that, because the system was nowhere near its capacity, he was certain that the root cause was not overwhelming demand for electricity. But he said it could take weeks to fully understand why the failure cascaded from a substation on West 49th Street through neighborhood after neighborhood. If so, by what means can an attack or sabotage be ruled out so fast? Likely not on the basis of facts. Rather it seems probable that a political decision was made here. It may be that we don't want to credit Iran and/or North Korea with a successful attack or want to point out how vulnerable our infrastructure is. It wouldn't be good for business to stress how easy it is for an enemy to shut down the city, leaving people trapped in subways or elevators,
In Philadelphia on June 21, 2019 we had the largest oil refinery on the East Coast blow up. At the time I wrote, "With the 9-11 attacks most people who were watching the World Trade Center didn't realize it was a deliberate attack until the second tower was hit. Here too, if this was sabotage, the public may not realize that it was no accident unless a second refinery is hit." But this country is so open to attack that clever enemies could easily alter the targets. An oil refinery first, a city power grid 22 days later. There would be no claim for responsibility, but we know that our sanctions against Iran and North Korea are destroying both nations. We are conducting a (justified) war against them now. We shouldn't be surprised if they retaliate in ways that get our attention without shaming us into an all-out war. WAR is on the matrix in the open text against odds of about 10.3 to 1. What touches it is COMPUTER, however this word had about a 78.8% chance to be somewhere on the matrix. Still, that they touch may be a hint of cyber warfare. The late but biggest discovery is that KOREA is also on the matrix at skip +1. There are only three such occurrences in Torah. Odds against one of four spellings sought for KOREA being on the matrix were about 118 to 1. This The overall odds against the matrix are to 37,192,735 to 1.
BOTTOM LINE TO DOD: Unless you have terrific evidence to the contrary, assume that North Korea and Iran are now engaging in major kinetic and cyber-attacks and intimidation against our nation. Before recommending a COA (Course of Action) to our President, take into consideration the question of whether Gulftainer has smuggled any weapons into the U.S. via Port Canaveral or the Port of Wilmington that they now control. Consider establishing an anti-cruise missile defense for the 10 highest profile targets we have in the nation.
FIGURE 2 - TURNING TO NUCLEAR ISSUES
North Korea apparently detonated its first hydrgen bomb on September 3, 2017. The North Korean News Agency (KCNA) said in English that "The H-bomb, the explosive power of which is adjustable from tens kiloton to hundreds of kilotons, is a multi-functional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack according to strategic goal." In planning against the threat our military should consider the issue of electrical transformer vulnerability as well as the location of potential replacement transformers. On Figure 2 the axis term is ELECTRIC TRANSFORMER. KOREAN is at the same skip. WAR is in the open text. CHINESE is at skip +1, as is KIM.
Figure 2 above: ELECTRIC TRANSFORMER is encoded with KOREAN, WAR, KIM and CHINESE. The spreadsheet below shows the odds calculation.
STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FIGURE 2. As per my normal protocol no statistical significance is assigned to the axis term, here the 6th lowest skip ELS of ELECTRIC TRANSFORMER in unwrapped or wrapped Torah. Before reducing combined odds by a factor of 6 to account for axis term ELS rank, one of four transliterations sought for KOREAN is at special case skip (+/- 1 or the absolute skip of the axis term) against odds of about 279 to 1. WAR is in the open text against odds of about 16 to 1. CHINESE is at skip +1 against odds of about 17.95 to 1. Note that the word used here for CHINESE is the same in Hebrew as SINAI. KIM was found at skip +1 against odds of about 7.5 to 1. Although the initial odds against this matrox were about 601,984 to 1, after dividing these odds by 6 the final odds against finding the matrix were about 100,330 to 1. There are many other matrices found that warn about the potential of a nuclear war with Korea (and China). Click here for my Table of Contents for Korean articles and matrices.
WARNING TO WAR PLANNERS. While my initial 2017 knee-jerk response was to want to nuke North Korea right then we must understand that if we lose our power transformers due to an EMP attack, we are not prepared to replace them quickly with American made transformers. In fact according to the U.S. Department of Energy, "The United States has limited production capability to manufacture LPTs. In 2010, only 15% of the Nation’s demand for power transformers (with a capacity rating of 60 MVA and above) was met through domestic production. Although the exact statistics are unavailable, power transformer market supply conditions indicate that the Nation’s reliance on foreign manufacturers was even greater for EHV power transformers with a capacity rating of 300 MVA and above (or a voltage rating of 345 kV and above)." In fact, this means that we might be forced to obtain them from China, who is likely to be our enemy if we attack North Korea first. Estimates are that we could lose much or of our grid for 6 months to 2 years in such an attack. While North Korea's plan has been to stall us while they complete their nuclear arsenal, it is we who should consider stalling them until we can build or buy replacement generators and get them into EMP hardened shelters. What is also important to understand is that if we threaten to cut off all trade with China (as I have advocated before), we must be certain that we can quickly obtain the needed from transformers for elsewhere. This need should be assigned the highest national priority because as a loss of the national power grid could result in the loss of 90% of our population within a year, with many of the survivors reduced to a state of cannibalism. See Figure 3 below.
Figure 3 below: Two views of the Starfish Prime nuclear test 500 km above the Pacific Ocean as seen from Honolulu, 2000 km away.
Figure 4 - Warning that an electromagnetic event could lead to cannabalism.
In 2012 Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich attracted much attention by warning about the threat of an EMP attack against the United States. This threat is summed up in 3-minute video on Fox News here. I read a book entitled ONE SECOND AFTER. The author is William R. Forstchen, but the foreword is written by Gingrich. The novel is about what would happen to America if a nuclear weapon were to detonate, say 300 miles up, above Kansas. How would this impact our power systems, our computer-based society, our food and medical supplies if an electromagnetic pulse were to hit us from such a device? On Figure 3 the axis term is ELECTRICITY MAGNET. It is touched by PULSE and WAR (both terms are at ELS). ROCKET at skip 2 is there, as is a form of the year of the book’s publication, (5)771/2011. Finally, the open text has a verse cross the axis term which describes a fate that seems close to the book’s answer about our food supply, namely Leviticus 26:29 which states THE FLESH OF YOUR SONS AND THE FLESH OF YOUR DAUGHTERS YOU SHALL EAT. By page 390 (two months after the attack) people had degenerated into cannibalism. The video on the link above indicates that within one year of the attack two-thirds of the U.S. population would be dead. But the video only uses an altitude for detonation of 250 miles. It leaves much of our west and Florida still with power. That slim hope might quickly vanish if the bomb goes off 50 miles higher, however as is shown on Figure 2 it appears that Florida might be spared because there are no high risk voltage transformers in this state (or in Arizona, Texas, Alabama or Louisiana).
The back cover of ONE SECOND AFTER points out that months before publication it was cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read.
A RAY OF HOPE: EPRI RESEARCH FINDS LIMITED IMPACT TO TRANSFORMERS FROM E3 ELECTRMAGNETIC PULSE
PALO ALTO, Calif. (February 21, 2017) – A new Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) report finds that a limited number of bulk-power transformers would be at potential risk of thermal damage due to a single high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) attack, but that additional work is needed to fully investigate the impact to the entire bulk-power system.
HEMP is caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon above the earth’s surface and is characterized by a high-magnitude, short duration pulse (E1), an intermediate pulse similar to lightning (E2), and a late-time component (E3), which is similar to a severe geomagnetic disturbance event. Potential impacts can range from damage to electronic components and insulators (E1 and E2) to voltage collapse and transformer damage (E3).
The EPRI report, “Magnetohydrodynamic Electromagnetic Pulse (MHD-EMP) Assessment of the Continental U.S. Electric Grid: GIC and Transformer Thermal Analysis,” evaluated the E3 grid impacts from a single high-altitude nuclear burst over 11 target locations. It included a geomagnetically induced current (GIC) analysis and transformer thermal assessment.
The study used modeling and assessment techniques and included bulk-power transformers, which convert high-voltage electricity from one transmission voltage to another enabling it to move from a generation source to the end user. It found between 3 and 14 transformers would be at potential risk of thermal damage; however, the risk from thermal damage does not suggest that they would be rendered inoperable during an E3 event. Rather the results indicate that while transformers may be at risk of damage, further analysis would be needed to understand the extent of damage using asset and system specific data, including the condition of the transformer.
“HEMP is a complex and challenging issue,” said Rob Manning, EPRI vice president of Transmission and Distribution. “This report provides the technical basis that is needed before an effective strategy to mitigate the effects of HEMP can be developed. There is still a lot of work to be done in order to better understand how HEMP may impact grid reliability and recovery efforts.
“This assessment indicates that the failure of a large number of bulk-power transformers due to thermal damage from E3 is unlikely. But the study results should not be interpreted to indicate that it is not a potential problem since impacts related to widespread outages due to voltage collapse are still being investigated,” he said.
In April 2016, EPRI, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), started a comprehensive three-year research project to provide a technical basis by which electric companies can address the HEMP threat by evaluating potential impacts, hardening and mitigation options, and recovery plans. (To see the DOE project outline click on this link.)
EPRI is also collaborating with utilities and several national laboratories. To view the report, click on this link.
About EPRI: The Electric Power Research Institute, Inc. (EPRI, www.epri.com) conducts research and development relating to the generation, delivery and use of electricity for the benefit of the public. An independent, nonprofit organization, EPRI brings together its scientists and engineers as well as experts from academia and industry to help address challenges in electricity, including reliability, efficiency, affordability, health, safety and the environment. EPRI's members represent approximately 90 percent of the electricity generated and delivered in the United States, and international participation extends to more than 30 countries. EPRI's principal offices and laboratories are located in Palo Alto, Calif.; Charlotte, NC; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Lenox, Mass.
Contact: Clay C. Perry
Senior Media Relations Manager
202-293-6184
clperry@epri.com