I attended a meeting with the FERC ( federal emergency regulatory commission ) it was a closed session and the information was very tense to say the least!

The concern is solar flare activity on the sun. There have been daily activity which is being closely watched and the sun is due for a maximum ejection soon. The United States and other countries are doing their best to be able to give warning on the big one. New transformers and other equipment are being put in place but it looks like the power of the flares will be more powerful than the grids, therefore, we must began to calmly prepare for outage for at least weeks, months or year or two. Lanterns, and other useful tools are now what you need to get and put away as our governments are looking for this to really happen.
I encourage each of you to really go to your local camping store such as Walmart, Kamart, SunBird and and other store that sale camping equipment and supplies and buy up the things you need to survive these  type of storms. The meeting lasted from 11am to 4pm with one 20min. break. They are very serious about these upcoming solar events. Media is not in on this yet so that panic will not set in.
When the power went out in 2003, 1989 and most recent in South Africa and LA to Arizona, it was based on a solar flare storm.  With the LA - Arizona case, media reported that one man pulled a transformer swhich which took out the power to those states, NOT! So please, I suggest that you take heed to this info, I would say do research but there is none to do because it is still underground info so do what  you have to do to be prepared.