The recent attacks by Russia on the electric grid in Ukraine, have displayed in full view the inherent vulnerability of electricity as an energy source. News photos and television screens have been full of scenes where lights are out in Ukrainian cities, there is no heat, and people can’t even charge their cell phones. Trolleys and electric trains sit dormant waiting for power to come back on.

The grid relies on transmission lines, generating plants and sub-stations. If any of these facilities goes down, the grid goes down. Russian targeting of the Ukrainian electric grid is not an accident.

Sometimes we experience a grid failure around here. I recall an incident years ago when we had a regional outage that took down electric power in much of New York, Ohio and parts of New England. Recently, the blizzard in Buffalo left thousands without power. Sabotage on a substation in North Carolina this past year left a region there without power for days.

Probably the greatest challenges for electrical reliability are still ahead. The grid has not been built for everything, including cars, to go all-electric. Articles that I have read say that here in rural New York, we should be better off than downstate. We have less growth here and our grid has also been bolstered by new solar and wind projects–most of which are Upstate. But, overall, the grid is not strong enough to handle all of the conversions to electric that are coming.

Another vulnerability, not often talked about, is the issue of storage–it is very difficult and expensive to store electrical energy. A battery might run for three or four hours before needing to be recharged. Pump-storage hydro plants can deliver large amounts of energy over a 12-24 hour period–but what happens after that? Unlike natural gas which is stored underground and gives us an energy supply for the whole winter, there is no long-term electric storage if the power goes out.

Gasoline or diesel generators can help stop-gap electrical outages in isolated situations, but they are too few and not large enough to replace the generating sources that power the grid.

We do see gasoline and diesel cars and trucks on the road in Ukraine, but I have not seen many Electric Vehicles (EV’s) driving around over there.

It is clear why Putin is targeting the electrical grid in Ukraine. He knows that by destroying it, much of the economic life in Ukraine will grind to a halt. People living in places like Kyiv or Kherson are now relying on old sources of heat like wood fires and coal or kerosene stoves trying to stay warm.

There is nothing that connects us more to each other than the electric grid. It binds us all together and is critical in the functioning of our everyday lives. Most everything we do depends upon it.

That fact, however, also defines our vulnerability to it. Maybe, someday, someone will invent a way to store electricity so that it will last for several days or all winter if there is an outage. Up until then, we will be subject to great inconvenience and disruption when power is not available.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident and a former New York state Assemblyman.