Authors: O. Krishevich, V. Peretyachenko

A global architectural approach to protecting critical systems in an era of systemic failures

ABSTRACT

The global electrical infrastructure is undergoing a phase of systemic stress. In the United States, a significant share of grid assets is operated beyond their originally designed service life — approximately 70% of transmission lines and large-scale equipment are older than 25 years, while the typical design horizon is 40–50 years. Large-scale outages have increased both in frequency and duration over the past two decades. In many developing regions, blackouts are not an exception but part of everyday reality, while hundreds of millions of people still lack access to electricity.

The centralized architecture of power systems (large-scale generation + long-distance transmission + single control points) transforms individual technical or organizational failures into cascading systemic crises, as demonstrated by major outages between 2003 and 2025. On 28 April 2025, a large-scale blackout occurred on the Iberian Peninsula, affecting the entire power systems of Spain and Portugal — a vivid illustration of the structural vulnerability of centralized grids.

Key thesis: the solution is not in the search for an “ideal device.” The solution lies in an architectural paradigm of resilience: decentralized energy nodes, autonomous microgrids with island mode capability, modular sources (renewables + storage + firm/dispatchable sources), elimination of single points of failure (SPOF), and the integration of cybersecurity into system design.

This study analyses: (i) the global context of infrastructure vulnerability, (ii) real-world energy crises of 2023–2025 and their cost, (iii) the social and economic consequences of failures, (iv) architectural principles of resilience, (v) the technological landscape through the lens of TRL logic, (vi) the positioning of solid-state modular solutions of the VENDOR.Max class as an architectural element (rather than a unique “miracle”), and (vii) regulatory evolution toward resilience-by-design in the EU, the United States, and globally.

KEY FINDINGS

• Centralized power systems exhibit structural vulnerability to cascading failures, whereby a single technical or organizational malfunction can lead to systemic consequences.
• Aging grid infrastructure is a significant driver of both increased frequency and duration of outages, particularly under conditions of rising load and increasing operational complexity.
• Energy resilience is achieved through architectural solutions that include distribution, redundancy, and autonomy, rather than through the selection of a single “most efficient” device.
• Solid-state generators of the VENDOR.Max class (TRL 5–6) should be correctly viewed as one element of a microgrid architecture, potentially applicable for covering part of the firm load, subject to further engineering validation.
• The economic assessment of microgrids and autonomous nodes is scenario-based and must account for sensitivity to key parameters: cost of capital, electricity prices, outage frequency, and reliability requirements.
• Regulatory policy in the EU and the United States is consistently shifting toward a resilience-first principle, as reflected in initiatives such as the CER Directive, the European Grids Package, and programs of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Global Challenge: Aging Grids and Uneven Access to Energy
2. Architectural Flaw: Why Centralized Grids Are Fragile
3. Real Crises: The Cost of Failures 2023–2025
4. Social and Economic Consequences of Blackouts
5. An Architectural Approach to Resilient Energy
6. Technology Landscape and TRL Logic
7. Solid-State Systems of the VENDOR.Max Class: Role, Limitations, Ecology
8. Modular Architecture: Scaling and Redundancy
9. The Economics of Resilience: An Illustrative Model
10. Policy and Regulation: Resilience as a New Standard
11. Why This Is a Necessity of the Present, Not the Future
12. Conclusion and Recommendations

1. GLOBAL CHALLENGE: AGING GRIDS AND UNEVEN ACCESS TO ENERGY

1.1. Aging Infrastructure in Developed Economies

In North America and Europe, a large share of grid assets was constructed in the 1960s–1980s and today operates under load levels and operating regimes that were not originally anticipated.

The situation in the United States (based on public reviews 2024–2025):

• Approximately 70% of transmission lines and large-scale equipment are older than 25 years, whereas the typical design horizon for large transformers is 40–50 years.
• A significant portion of distribution networks is classified as “beyond useful life,” increasing the frequency of failures and emergency repairs.
• The number of major outages (affecting tens of thousands of customers) has increased markedly after 2010 compared to the previous decade.
• The average duration of outages has increased.

According to a U.S. Department of Energy report (July 2025), under a scenario involving the continued retirement of 104 GW of firm capacity and insufficient addition of new firm generation, annual Loss of Load Hours in DOE models may increase from single-digit hours per year today to more than 800 hours per year by 2030 — i.e., approximately a 100-fold increase relative to current levels. This is a scenario-based calculation, not a baseline forecast.

Regulatory bodies and energy ministries observe a consistent trend: without accelerated modernization, increased reserve capacity, and the introduction of more “flexible” grid architectures, the risk of large-scale blackouts will rise toward the early 2030s.

1.2. Developing Markets: Frequent Blackouts and Electrification Deficits

In developing regions, the problem is not only aging infrastructure but also fundamentally insufficient grid capacity, high dependence on weather conditions, and chronic underinvestment in networks.

Global picture:

• Hundreds of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia still live without continuous access to electricity.
• In many countries, the frequency of power outages is measured in dozens of days per year.
• Parts of the economy are forced to rely on diesel generators and informal power sources.

Major events of recent decades:

• 2012 India: outages affecting hundreds of millions of people (one of the largest by population impact).
• 2009 Brazil: large-scale regional outages.
• 2011 Southwestern United States: major regional blackout.
• 2025 Iberian Peninsula: total blackout of the power systems of Spain and Portugal.

In parallel, the number of initiatives by the World Bank, regional development banks, and national governments aimed at financing grid modernization and the deployment of decentralized solutions is increasing.

2. ARCHITECTURAL FLAW: WHY CENTRALIZED GRIDS ARE FRAGILE

2.1. Cascading Failures and the Role of Single Faults

Centralized systems with large generators, long transmission lines, and tightly coupled dispatching are prone to cascading failures: a local problem can trigger a chain reaction.

Mechanics of a centralized system:

• Generation is concentrated in large facilities (thermal, nuclear, hydro).
• Power is transmitted over long distances via high-voltage lines.
• Control and balancing are performed through centralized dispatch.
• The failure of a single component can lead to power flow redistribution and overload of neighboring elements → protection activation → cascade.

Important: in real systems, a cascade is not “one faulty transformer,” but a composition of factors: operating margins, protection settings, inertia/frequency stability, availability of fast reserves, cyber/communication layers, and coordination of intersystem power flows.

Case: Iberian Blackout, 28 April 2025

Facts (based on public sources):

• Date: 28 April 2025, approximately 12:33 CEST.
• Geography: Spain, Portugal; briefly — parts of southwestern France.
• Nature: total blackout of the power systems of Spain and Portugal (event recorded by ENTSO-E).
• Restoration: within hours; in most areas — approximately ~10 hours.
• Disconnected load: public estimates around 31 GW (metrics vary by source).

Consequences: reports indicated tragic incidents potentially linked to the outage (fires caused by candles, carbon monoxide poisoning from generators, disruption of medical services).

Causality: at the time of public materials, the formulation remained “cause under investigation / early analysis.” At the institutional level, it is appropriate to: (i) record the fact, (ii) describe mechanisms as possible / based on early analysis, and (iii) refrain from asserting a root cause as proven in the absence of an official commission report.

Energy incidents of the past decade across different regions of the world demonstrate common elements:

• Line overloads and incorrect sequencing of protection operations.
• Insufficient availability of fast-responding capacity.
• Complexity of coordination among multiple system operators.
• Limited time and incomplete information for decision-making.

2.2. Three Fundamental Vulnerabilities

Vulnerability 1: Weather and Logistics

In many systems, the growing share of solar and wind generation reduces grid “inertia” and makes frequency control more complex without corresponding modernization. At the same time:

• Diesel backup generation depends on fuel logistics and is exposed to price and geopolitical shocks.
• Chemical energy storage systems depend on global supply chains of lithium, cobalt, and other critical materials.
• Digitalization of grids creates a broad attack surface for cyber interference.

Vulnerability 2: Storage Systems — Life-Cycle Constraints

Degradation:

• Li-ion: capacity degradation depends on cycling and temperature.
• Lifespan: typically 10–20+ years, but infrastructure horizons of 40–50 years require a replacement strategy.

End-of-life and environmental footprint:

• Recycling can significantly reduce emissions compared to primary material extraction.
• Requires industrial infrastructure; the processes themselves involve energy consumption and emissions.

Supply-chain geopolitics:

• Cobalt, lithium, nickel, and processing capacities are unevenly distributed.
• Dependence on a limited number of hubs creates strategic risk.

Vulnerability 3: Cyberattacks and Digital Infrastructure

• Legacy assets were often not designed for modern threat environments.
• The IoT layer and DER integration increase the attack surface.
• Coordinated attacks can accelerate the development of cascading events.

Studies on power system cybersecurity show that coordinated attacks on multiple substations and control elements can accelerate cascading failures and complicate restoration.

3. REAL CRISES: THE COST OF FAILURES

3.1. Global Cases (Illustrative Examples)

Italy Blackout (28 September 2003)

• Scale: outage affected more than 55 million people (virtually all of Italy except Sardinia).
• Duration: restoration by region took hours; in some areas — until night or the next restoration stage (time dispersion was significant).
• Macroeconomic damage: in the academic assessment by Schmidthaler & Reichl (2016), damage from Italy 2003 is estimated to exceed €1.15 billion (estimate depends on methodology and loss composition).

India Blackouts (30–31 July 2012)

• 30 July — outage affected more than 400 million people.
• 31 July — a second, larger outage affected approximately 620–670 million people (about half of India’s population and ~9% of the world’s population).
• Power loss / supply disruption: publications cite an estimate of approximately ~32 GW (as “interrupted/affected” capacity) for one of the event days.
• Nature of impacts: transportation shutdowns, water supply disruptions, and transition of some critical facilities to backup power.

Systemic context (United States, annual outage impact)

• According to LBNL estimates (for DOE), total economic losses from power outages in the United States are estimated at approximately $79–80 billion per year (a wide sensitivity range is also reported in various publications).

3.2. Cost of Failures for Critical Infrastructure

Healthcare / Hospitals

• Industry assessments (based on Ponemon studies cited in sector reports) estimate the “typical” damage from a serious power outage incident in a hospital at approximately $690,000 per event (direct and indirect losses).

Data Centers

• In widely cited Ponemon estimates (in industry reviews), the average cost of unplanned data center downtime is approximately $8,851 per minute; with typical incident durations, this rapidly scales to hundreds of thousands of dollars per event.

Section 3 conclusion

Major systemic failures (Italy 2003; India 2012) demonstrate that with durations of hours to days, damages can exceed €1 billion per event in developed economies, while for critical facilities the cost of a single incident is often measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

4. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF BLACKOUTS

4.1. Critical Infrastructure: Healthcare, Water, Digital Systems

Power supply failures have direct and measurable consequences for critical infrastructure — primarily for healthcare, water supply/sanitation, and digital services. At the macro level, U.S.-based research indicates that the annual cost of power interruptions for the economy can reach tens of billions of dollars per year; the classic estimate by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) provides a reference point of approximately $79 billion/year (with a sensitivity range of $22–135 billion/year), while the majority of the damage falls on the commercial and industrial sectors.

4.1.1. Aggregate Macroeconomic Damage from Power Interruptions (USA)

Hospitals and clinics (healthcare)

In healthcare, power outages are not only a financial issue but also a risk to patients, as a significant share of clinical processes is electricity-dependent: ventilators, dialysis, infusion pumps, monitoring, laboratory diagnostics, as well as IT layers (EHR/EMR, PACS, communications, medication management).

The financial aspect within a scientific framing is correctly described as follows:

• the cost of an incident is determined by (i) duration, (ii) how quickly and reliably the emergency power layer performed (generators/UPS), (iii) the scale of procedure disruption, (iv) damage to equipment/IT, and (v) secondary costs (patient transfers, logistics, staff overtime);
• there is no universal “single number for all hospitals” in the literature: it is correct to provide orders of magnitude and a linkage to methodology.

The engineering and regulatory dimension: requirements for emergency power in healthcare facilities (as an element of resilience) are formulated in specialized guidance for health facilities, where the focus is not on “nice numbers” but on ensuring continuity of critical functions.

Key conclusion: in healthcare, the “cost of an outage” is a function not only of economics but also of acceptable clinical risk; therefore, resilience here is always calculated as minimizing the probability of failure of critical loads, rather than as optimizing the “average bill.”

4.1.2.1 Financial Damage to Hospitals

4.1.2.2 Cost of IT Downtime in Healthcare

Water supply and sanitation (water & sanitation)

Water supply and sanitation systems are structurally electricity-dependent: pumping stations, water treatment, sewage pumping, chemical dosing, and water quality monitoring. During power outages, the following may occur:

• pressure drops and disruptions of water supply,
• breakdown of technological processes (filtration/disinfection),
• increased sanitary and epidemiological risks,
• cascading impacts across urban services (hospitals, food supply chains, fire safety).

Quantitative anchor: for the City of Tshwane (South Africa), a published analysis shows that measures to ensure continuity of water supply against the backdrop of power interruptions yield a significant economic benefit, expressed as a benefit/cost ratio of approximately ~15 (in that case — based on annual calculations of benefits and additional costs).

4.1.3.1 Economics of Water Supply Resilience (Tshwane case)

4.1.3.2 Full Water Outage: Per-Capita Damage

Digital infrastructure and data (data centers / cloud / telecom)

For the digital economy, power outages at the facility level quickly translate into:

• direct revenue loss,
• SLA penalties,
• cascading service failures (B2B/B2C),
• reputational damage.

Quantitative anchor (Ponemon Institute research):

• in materials from trade press that summarize Ponemon’s findings on data centers, a reference point of average damage of approximately ~$505k per incident is cited (in the context of unplanned downtime);
• other reviews along the same line discuss broader ranges of the cost per incident (depending on organization type, redundancy architecture, and scenario).

4.1.4.1 Cost of a Data Center Downtime Incident

4.1.4.2 Cost per Minute of Downtime

Key conclusion: the cost of downtime in digital infrastructure is not a constant; it follows a “heavy-tail” distribution (tail risk), where rare major incidents account for a disproportionately large share of total damage.

4.2. Indirect Effects: Economy and Societal Stability

Industry and logistics

Industry and logistics are particularly sensitive to power interruptions due to:

• continuous technological processes,
• high costs of work-in-progress,
• risks of equipment damage during emergency shutdown/restart,
• cascading impacts across supply chains.

At the macro level, LBNL estimates indicate that a substantial share of total damage from power interruptions falls precisely on the commercial and industrial segments of the economy.

4.2.1 Downtime Cost in Industry (per hour)

Correct formulation:

• the range of downtime costs at the enterprise level varies by orders of magnitude (depending on the industry, degree of automation, and the product’s “value per hour”);
• in high-automation manufacturing and critical logistics hubs, the damage from stoppages can reach levels where it becomes meaningful to treat resilience as a component of competitiveness and supply security, rather than only as “insurance.”

Households and small business

For households and SMEs, there are fewer aggregated universal figures because methodologies differ (WTP/COI, direct/indirect costs, valuation of time, health, food spoilage, income loss). However, the overall effect is well described as follows:

• at the household level, losses may appear moderate,
• at the district/city level, they quickly scale to tens of millions per day when a power outage coincides with degraded water supply/communications,
• for SMEs, the key factor is digital revenue and cold chains (retail/HoReCa).

4.2.2 Households

4.2.3 Small Business

Social trust and institutional effects

Repeated failures of basic services (electricity, water, communications) have measurable institutional aftereffects: people and businesses begin to perceive infrastructure instability as a “risk norm,” which affects:

• trust in institutions,
• investment behavior,
• migration decisions,
• political dynamics.

4.2.4 Social Trust and Institutional Effects

Section 4 conclusion

1. The economic damage from power interruptions in a developed economy can amount to tens of billions of dollars per year; for the United States, a frequently used reference point in the literature is $79 billion/year (sensitivity range $22–135 billion/year).
2. Critical infrastructure (healthcare/water/digital systems) exhibits a non-linear damage function: a short disruption may be tolerable, but under certain conditions (failed reserve start, disruption of water supply, failure of digital layers) the damage increases stepwise.
3. The digital economy demonstrates a high incident cost for downtime of data centers/services (public reviews citing Ponemon indicate an order of hundreds of thousands of dollars per event, with wide dispersion).
4. The social layer: resilience is not only an engineering KPI, but also an infrastructure of trust; repeated failures alter the long-term behavior of households and business.

5. AN ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH TO RESILIENT ENERGY

5.1. Architectural Principles (Not a Specific Device)

At the architectural level, resilience is based on six fundamental principles:

Principle 1: Local generation

Generation as close as possible to consumers (building rooftops, industrial sites, local sources), which reduces losses and dependence on trunk transmission lines.

Principle 2: Autonomous power nodes with island mode

Each node (hospital, communications hub, district) is capable of temporarily operating autonomously from the main grid, preventing cascade propagation.

Important: resilient island mode most often requires grid-forming capability (voltage/frequency formation) at the node — via inverters and/or synchronous/firm sources.

Principle 3: Modularity and redundancy without a single point of failure

Multiple sources can be combined such that the failure of one element does not lead to system failure:

The meaning: not to “replace everything with one thing,” but to build an architecture in which the failure of one subsystem does not disable critical loads.

Principle 4: Decentralized control and local automation

Decisions on segmentation, balancing, and load prioritization are made at the node level with fast response, not only by a central dispatcher.

Practical implementation:

• Local decision-making algorithms
• Mesh / redundant communication channels
• Graceful degradation upon loss of the center

Principle 5: Limiting dependence on fuel and bottleneck resources

Reducing the role of diesel generation as a day-to-day source, using it only as backup; reducing dependence on external supplies of fuel and critical materials.

Principle 6: Integrating cybersecurity into design

Applying unified authentication, encryption, and monitoring standards for all elements, including distributed sources.

These principles can be implemented using different technology stacks; what matters is the architecture of interconnections and reserves, not a specific model of generator or storage device.

5.2. Illustrative Example: A Critical Hospital Microgrid

Consider a model example (not a normative design, but an illustrative scenario) in which a hospital supports critical loads through a local microgrid:

Components (illustrative; not a “default” design):

• Solar: 100 kW (daytime share of load)
• BESS: 200 kWh (night / transients, balancing)
• Firm source: 50 kW (24/7 anchor power, if required)
• Diesel backup: 200 kW (emergency, prolonged stress scenarios)
• Smart controller: island mode, protections, synchronization, EMS

Operating modes:

• Normal: grid + solar (optimization)
• Night: BESS + firm source (dispatchable / grid-forming, if required)
• Cloudiness: firm + BESS compensate
• Blackout: island mode, prioritization of critical loads
• Prolonged stress: diesel as the “last layer”

Resilience:

Such an architecture allows:

• In normal operation — minimizing the load on the trunk grid
• During short-term disturbances — using storage and a solid-state source
• During serious failures — switching to island mode and prioritizing critical loads

Availability of critical loads is determined by N+1/N+2 redundancy and correct operating-mode management.

6. TECHNOLOGY LANDSCAPE AND TRL LOGIC

6.1. TRL as the Language of Technology Maturity

The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale is used by energy agencies and research organizations to assess technology maturity:

• TRL 1–3: fundamental research and laboratory demonstrations of principles
• TRL 4–6: prototypes and systems tested in a relevant environment
• TRL 7–8: demonstration projects in a real operational environment
• TRL 9: commercially operated, widely deployed solutions

For critical-purpose infrastructure (hospitals, water utilities, transport), solutions at TRL 8–9 with demonstrated reliability and environmental profile are typically required.

6.2. Current Maturity of Technologies

Solar PV (TRL 9)

• Mature technology, widely deployed
• Variable generation requires combination with storage
• LCOE depends on geography and financing

Wind (Onshore) (TRL 9)

• Mature technology
• Variability requires grid flexibility

BESS (Li-ion) (TRL 9)

• Mature technology
• Constraints: degradation, temperature regimes, supply chains
• Replacement and recycling strategy

Traditional generators

• Diesel and gas generators — mature (TRL 9)
• Provide dispatchable capacity
• Constraints: emissions, fuel supply chains
• Their role is logically limited to backup functions

6.3. Solid-State Electrodynamic Systems (VENDOR.Max class)

Status: Emerging class of technologies at TRL 5–6

Architectural framing (publicly correct):

• A regime-based electrodynamic system with a stable operating regime
• Prototypes have demonstrated a stable operating regime in laboratory and limited field conditions
• Require further demonstrations and certification

Positioning within the architecture:

Architecturally, such systems can be viewed as scalable modules for a share of firm load (baseload) within microgrids, while key operational parameters (longevity, grid integration, environmental profile in an LCA sense) must undergo independent verification.

Important: this is not a “magical device” that by itself solves the resilience problem. It is a representative of a class of modular sources that can occupy a niche within microgrid architecture as weather-independent base power at the kilowatt scale.

6.4. TRL Trajectory 2026–2035 (Scenario Logic)

Near-term (2026–2027):

• Field pilots and independent engineering validation
• TRL 6→7 upon successful validation
• Certification pre-testing

Medium-term (2027–2029):

• Expanded pilots, certification
• First scalable deployments of microgrids

Long-term (2030+):

• Industrialization of modular DER architectures as a resilience standard