I have been aware of this for awhile now...really makes you wonder if it will go beyond a drill (as so many of them do) and in November when it is cold and winter weather perhaps (though sometimes we are still brown in December) it would be a bad time of year for the power to go out for sure!

12 hours is bad enough for the average family.. if they do it for 24 hours or longer i can just imagine what will happen in the city.. Out here in the country this happens so often for two or three days either folks are ready or they just pack up and go to town for a holiday at a hotel or a friends place.. Now what if those friends and hotels dont have power.. Im wondering how wide spread at one time this will be..

This is a SIMULATED EVENT!
kinda like playing a board game...no actual power outages are planned.
I for one applaud those that are responsible for doing this...finally some preparations.
It's more to assess proper responses to the effects of a widespread power outage.

Yeah, this is great, but you've got to figure that anything they simulate will be dwarfed by the problems that they'll face in a real situation. Still, gotta start somewhere...

The question in my mind is how far can you get simulating a grid down situation without turning the power off?? Certainly if you were simulating it at home, you'd shut off your breakers.

Now you might say that it would be too risky to actually shut off the power on a population of people because back up generators for hospitals, etc might not work, and I agree, it could cause all sorts of problems and lawsuits, but how far can you get without doing so?? I don't discount their efforts at this drill, better something than nothing, and maybe they do intend to cut power for a limited time... I guess we'll see.

Martha,

Simulations permits to learn significant lessons without incurring risks. This is why airline pilots train in simulators and why military units run tabletop or computer-assisted exercises (CAX). "What ifs" and "so whats" can be figured out in a cost effective, risk free situations. They would likely have representation from all those organizations (hospitals, military...) that would offer their perspective on the effects of grid down. Also important is that they can fast forward time or rewind as required.

Pulling the plug for a few days wouldn't serve much interest as most critical infrastructure would just run on generators until they run out of gas, days or weeks later, and it would not represent a long time, grid down situation. A simulation can look at Day 0, D+1, D+20 or D+600 if needs be. In your example of simulation at home by turning the breaker off, you would only be experiencing a very small piece of it. You pull out the candles and start the generator and you're happy. But you wouldn't be able to see what would happen after the water stops flowing, you've ran out of gas for the generator or your dog knocks a candle off and sets you dining room on fire.

So, good thing this simulation occurs, it wil be interesting to find out the outcome and identified lessons learned and whether money will be spent to rectify issues.

They are doing this to figure out "where the holes are" in the system...they will have to do more than "simulate" to find that out I would think