Hype about a massive "Carrington event" solar flare, that could come Any Time Now wiping out the entire power grid for a Really Long Time, has been frequent in both the mainstream and alternative media for several years now. Mixed in has been related hype about an EMP caused by terrorists/foreign power/etc and lots of false claims that and EMP and a CME would have similar effects (they wouldn't - a CME would not fry electronics).

Why all this hype?

I think that the evil cabalists would like to shut off the U.S. power grid (except for power sources for their own use, of course) in order facilitate and excuse martial law. But they would need some cover story to blame the outage on. An EMP would not be ideal, because it would be hard for it to knock out the entire country, and would probably damage a lot of their electronics, not all of which are hardened. A solar flare would be a much better option, being ostensibly an Act of God, and would still justify all communications being down for a long time, which would be an essential element for martial law.

The problem is, the sun seems to be entering a quiescent era, making a suitably large solar flare less likely. They would need a pretty big one for the ruse to work. They would not be expecting the flare to actually do the job, they would just time their deliberate shut-off of the grid to coincide with a CME impact. I think some preparation for this was all the hype a few months ago that a CME in July 2012 would have wiped out the grid if it had been earth directed, which I seriously doubt, as it was really not as big as they claimed. I had a post explaining this in greater detail but it's not in Google Cache any more.