Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[childers.paula AT epamail.epa.gov]

As someone who contemplates networking in nearly all its geekly
varieties, I have at least some fuzzy conception of how anomalous,
perhaps seemingly minor faults/failures can cascade into huge issues -
sort of that chaos theory, tipping point stuff.  Anytime you have a
grid, with nodes on the grid functioning "independently" (with
non-identical behavior "rulesets") in an environment that cannot be
competely controlled, you will never be able to eliminate all
possibility of such occurrences. The only things that can be done are
fail-safes. It appears that one of the most important fail-safes on that
N-M grid, the nuclear plant shutdowns, worked. I would be interested to
know what ones did not.

Along those same lines, the only way to truly prevent huge power grid
failures is not to have a huge grid. IOW, decentralize and
disconnect/de-grid power generation, or at least have more off-grid
backups. Wind and solar generation would help prevent such problems
somewhat, as the "monolithic power plant" model of today would be
replaced by multiple smaller generating sources, making any
generation-based anomalies smaller and potentially less catastrophic.
However, large commercial wind farms would still have to be linked to a
grid system to deliver the power. I vote that we all should have some PV
panels on our houses instead. Then we could build neighborhood grids,
and we wouldn't have to wait for Duke Power, etc. to wire us back up.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/199/solar_patriot.html