It turns out that a loss as little as 2% of the grid substations can take down the entire system in a cascade failure; presumably high load-boarding substations were targeted in that simulation. The nature of the vulnerability is not new to those who have kept up with scale-free analyses of the power grid, but the figure is. Among the proposed solutions is keeping an eye on increasing redundancy in the network when making future expansions. Redundancy is less efficient, and not automatically rewarded by market forces. You can have cheaper power, but not without risk.
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