3 ms·
What if the electricity grid depends on some AWS service?
by umeshunni 11mo ago
What if the electricity grid depends on some AWS service?
- quaintdev 11mo agoThat would be circular dependency.
- croes 11mo agoAnd?
- AnIrishDuck 11mo agoThe grid actually already has a fair number of (non-software) circular dependencies. This is why they have black start [1] procedures and run drills of those procedures. Or should, at least; there have been high profile outages recently that have exposed holes in these plans [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout#Power_restoration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou...
- thatguy0900 11mo agoIt doesn't though? Weird what if
- jacquesm 11mo agoYou'd be surprised. See. GP asks a very interesting question. And some grid infra indeed relies on AWS, definitely not all of it but there are some aspects of it that are hosted by AWS.
- croes 11mo agodo you know for sure? And if not yet, you can bet someone will propose it in the future. So not a weird what if at all
- jacquesm 11mo agoThis is already happening. I have looked at quite a few companies in the energy space this year, two of them had AWS as a critical dependency in their primary business processes and that could definitely have an impact on the grid. To their defense: AWS presumably tests their fall-back options (generators) with some regularity. But this isn't a farfetched idea at all.
- Sl1mb0 11mo agoI worked for an energy tech startup that did consulting for big utility companies. It absolutely does.