Ice storms expose grid vulnerability

South Dakota snowfall map

The Spring storm now bringing some much-needed moisture to South Dakota is about a week before last year's.

Remember, too, that these utilities are not Google or Facebook. They are not accustomed to a state of constant market turmoil and reinvention. This is a venerable old boys network, working very comfortably within a business model that has been around, virtually unchanged, for a century.--David Roberts at Grist

In 2010, some of the state's American Indian nations were left without power for many weeks because utility companies have succumbed to the moral hazards of disaster declarations that pay them to replace ice-downed power transmission lines year after year.

Now, it's happening again but this time white people are being put upon.

The Sicangu-Lakota Oyate sits above a geothermal gold mine.

More on thermoelectrics here, here, and here.