Blackout: War and Crisis in Electric Power Generation

Abstract

After World War II, electricity supply was generally taken for granted. There were, however, a couple of cases that gave considerable cause for thought. In Britain it was the overhang of war that led to disaster, while in the US it was a fragile network that had grown organically that proved vulnerable. These two events together show the position electricity had reached as an essential part of life which developed nations could not function without.

You can’t fight a war and scrape right down to the bottom of the barrel, throwing in everything you’ve got, and then start up again as if nothing had happened.

Clement Attlee