What's Causing Power Outages In The U.S.
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- Опубліковано 11 сер 2022
- The average American experienced just over eight hours of power outages in 2020. The overall duration of power interruptions in the U.S. more than doubled over the past 5 years. Beyond just inconvenience, blackouts cost the U.S. an estimated $150 billion every year. They can also be fatal, as most recently seen during the 2021 outage in Texas. So why is the U.S. power grid so unreliable and can it be fixed?
Despite the Biden administration’s effort to improve the situation, recent actions would suggest the federal government lacks the ability to enforce a grid modernization.
There were a total of 549 policy and deployment actions on grid modernization during the second quarter of 2022, but of the $12.86 billion in investment under consideration, regulators only approved $478.7 million, according to the NC Clean Energy Technology Center.
“Electricity systems are an area of shared federal and state jurisdictions,” according to Romany Webb, senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “The fact that we have this split authority between the federal government and the states is one of the factors that contributes to the complexity of the sort of modernizing the grid and building out additional infrastructure.”
What’s more, certain state and regional regulators often have political incentives to fight against changes to the power grid.
“The state entities that regulate electric utilities are called state public utility commissions,” said Webb. “In some states, those commissioners are elected. So if we’re talking about making investments that are going to be really expensive and are going to be increasing electricity bills, they might see a lot of pushback from customers about that and that might affect [the commissioners’] chances of reelection.”
Those directly affected by grid-modernization efforts say there are valid reasons to fight against such disruptive projects.
“We’re not opposed to solar, but it does not belong on farmland. It doesn’t belong in an agriculturally zoned area and it certainly does not belong on timberland,” said Susan Ralston, president of Citizens for Responsible Solar. “These projects are very destructive to the land and at the end of the day, we’re trying to do what’s right by our county. We’re trying to preserve the rural nature of our country and really convince our elected officials that the rural character is more important than caving into developers.”
Watch the video to find out more about why the U.S. power grid has become unreliable.
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Why Power Outages Are Getting Worse In The U.S.
The electric grid is older than the politicians not fixing it
Surprisingly
@@jtgd you forgot an "-un"
@@marcosda4th92 I think they meant surprisingly because of how old many politicians are.
And that’s saying something
The electric grid problems and infrastructure problems are inherent in the economic system of the US. So how could any politicians want to fix it, when the politicians themselves are produced by the political system of the US?
The power grid was established with the technology at that time! Demands have increased since the 1950's - 1970's.
This is literally the most important factor and they only have one sentence about it.
The GRID has been called the most complex machine ever built...but built and fined tuned to match its generation to its characteristic load...you change the load and gen characteristics (ie Ev charging at night, not consistant gen (solar/wind))...you need to change the machine ...otherwise the machine is gonna break. Also, moving all the transportation load from gas/diesel to the electric Grid is an unprecented load shift...unwise to do it in 30 years, let alone 10.
The only way for energy companies to make profit is to not upgrade the technology and use the same equipment while increasing price on energy
Sorry you are wrong. Utilities make money on their approved investments and expenses. They have an allowed rate of return on approved spending. They usually are allowed to make 8%-13% rate of return. So they are incentivized to spend and do all the work that is appropriates by the regulators. The utilities don’t make the mess they are at the whim of politicians and regulators who tell them to do everything they do. When the people get upset the politicians still blame the utility even though it was the politicians making the decision.
@@matthewhuszarik4173 sorry you’re wrong politicians and regulators have nothing to do with maintenance or upkeep and you pretty much confirmed what I said they’re more concerned about profits than fixing utilities
I remember playing SimCity and had so many problems with power plants, lol.
Me when I play Factorio
When i play city skylines 🤣
A game with so much potential but went down the drain cuz of EA
@@pudanielson1 yeah, they messed it up
Congratulations! Your Sim City experience makes you more qualified for an urban planning career than 50% of planners
U.S. government and car companies: We're switching from gas vehicles to electric!
Power grid: 👀
WTF?... you said EV's??? What video were you watching?
Video stated it was due mainly to extreme.. Weather, Weather, Weather!...
Put the pie down and re-watch! GEEZ-US!
No problems in Norway with the grid.
90% of All New car sales in Norway are EV's!!!
@@creolerican EVs rely on the power grid to keep it going. If you cannot have a reliable power grid; it will be difficult for EV vehicles to get its charging needs.
@@creolerican the point is that the grid can’t even handle the current load we’re putting on it and they want to transition us to ev’s that we are not even capable of charging. If everyone had an ev charging at night it wouldn’t work. We would have constant blackouts. Try and keep up lefty
@@mikafiltenborg2291 no one cares about norway. This video has nothing to do with norway
The worse part is the u.s. is not known for infrastructure development!!
We just spent hundreds of millions on infrastructure 2 trillion lots of it was tax breaks for rich people to buy electric cars and the taxpayers to pay for charging stations so that the next time you have a brown out or total power outage you can say I paid for that go green
😂
And when Biden tried "Build Back Better," the republicans killed it. 😥
@@dentatusdentatus1592there was already enough pork for the BBQ Republicans thought 8%inflation was enough no need to raise it to 15% and it's your turn to change Bidens diaper
It’s kind of interesting because historically, the US was known for its good infrastructure. Intercontinental railroads, trolly systems, electrical grids being invented there, etc. They just don’t want to maintain it I guess or upgrade it. They’ll do the impossible and be at the genesis of such marvels and never look at improving upon it. It’s absolutely maddening.
I recently retired from an electric companies nearly all Arizonans would recognize but I still don't feel right naming. I worked in IT Field Services and was focused on energy delivery. "More extreme weather" is not nearly as important as the economics of bulk electric power; upgrades to aging equipment can be justified when failures reach a level that the Corporation Commission will accept because ratepayers pay for capital projects. It is hard to be proactive when the cost to the company of doing that is much higher than waiting for failures.
There is a bright side, though. For many decades system protection was based on outright failures: downed or faulted power lines, transformer fires - all are reactive instead of proactive. In the last couple decades technology advances can alert or react before a destabilizing failure occurs. Large transformers have monitors for breakdown products in the oil, sharply reducing sudden failures of the transformers. In Arizona we are interconnected with essentially all North America west of the Rockies, extending from the Mexican Border to approximately the Arctic Circle. We have experienced extended outages from events as trivial as a filbert tree growing too tall under a power line in the Pacific Northwest. Every minute or so generation must equal loss plus load, and in a far-flung system like ours the balance is very tenuous. To counter such threats Remedial Action Schemes - computerized protection systems that monitor conditions in multiple locations and perform coordinated controls in the interest of stability - have become essential. The cost is minor; the benefits potentially immense.
LIE-beral Govt and corporations have LONG VIEWED PAY RAISES TO POWERFUL UNIONS AS BEING FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN MAINTAINING INFRASTRUCTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Until LIE-berals and their corporate allies move away from buying union votes at any price - the problems and failures and FIRES will continue!!!!!!!!!!!
And things will get much worse if LIE-berals actually do persuade a lot of people to buy electric TOY cars since demand on the grid will increase dramatically!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thanks for the insights
@@jamesalles139 You are welcome...........its just to bad that so many LIE-berals respond with knee jerk hostility when their failing policies create HAVOC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've heard about this system from Engineering Explained.
at the end of the day, physiscs always wins. texas electric bills doubled after the storm
I worked in a 1000MGW plant for 33 years. It was a big base load units and we ran pretty much flat out for most of the time. We burned 10000 tons of coal a day. I think something that has been over looked is the amount of water required to ran we had 4 river circ pumps that are used to pump water through the condensers and coolers, low river levels in the summer was always a concern each one of those circ pumps, pumped 1500 gpm
God bless you,🍻🙏🙏.
Do you think it would be wise to use liquified salt? Or is the upkeep too stringent and dangerous? I haven’t done much research on liquid salt systems….
@Matrixnukum youbal
My phone messed s
Fascinating. Thanks for posting. Great insight.
I love the nonstop videos from CNBC trying to convince us that the collapse of the United States isn't really so bad, and was always unavoidable/inevitable instead of the result of criminal negligence by our government, media, and business leaders.
Exactly, it's so very obvious complete nonsense.
Yet a certain party votes down investment in the grid!!!!!
nothing is collapsing. these videos just bring attention to things. you can always borrow money, build whats needed and pay it off over time.
Excellent comment! Thanks!
They're gonna send another $40 billion to Ukraine. Nothing for the homeless, Nothing to stop all the gun violence, Nothing for infrastructure. They want to lecture other countries and start war with China.
It's caused by building houses for the past 40 years without passive solar and geothermal energy. The reason this is not done is because the prices of houses are far too high. The reason prices of houses are far too high is because of trading real estate like poker chips. Homes should be owned by individuals and not companies who double the price of homes over time due to their brokering.
You forget to add in immigration. There's a reason companies buy real estate. They allow cheap labor to flood the border and rent the housing to them. It is more so the reason housing is higher than anything. Look how immigration has increased since the 70s and follow the math of stagnant wages with increased prices. Kinda basic economics
That is not the reason housing costs are so high, you are just another low info repeater.
Control freak. Uninformed control freak
@@williamrockwell9705 Yeah he forgot individuals who own 3 homes and rent them to 20 students or divide into multiple tiny sub-flats at ridonculous price.
Migration from villages into cities and rise of labor/ building material cost also has an impact but it doesn't change the fact houses aren't a commodity like they used to be 50 years ago, now they are an investment
Banks!!!
Texas seriously needs to update their grid system before anymore people get hurt.
So basically we're now feeling the consequences of the movement to shut down power plants and that we've stopped building new ones. We have the technology to provide the energy and the reliability for our modern needs but we refuse to build anything for a variety of reasons. Reducing CO2 wont change the power lines. Shutting down coal/natural gas plants dont help. Build small modular reactor stations that are extremely safe and provide reliable clean energy. And stop with the NIMBY attitude on power lines and so forth.
The main reason isn't even CO2, it's money. No one wants to pay for it, but they will gladly continue to take our tax dollars from us.
Not really. The issue is that the grid is older then most politicians.
In addition the US has not enough Landline and stations to connect all the energy production from the source to the grid
In Cali they had to shut down powerline because they caused wildfires. Due to the heat they wear expending and in risk of hitting trees which would cause sparks.
In 2021 Texas was only minutes away from a month of rolling blackout because powerplants and gas pipeline froze (they weren't winter safe) and were shutdown . In addition to the powerlines were frozen over with water and collapsed in part.
Those small modul reaktors are more like a pipe dream as of now.
They can't get produced on a financial viable scale. Why build only 200MW of power when you can build 5000MW. How do you ship those reactors?
No problem, I will just switch to an EV instead of an ICEV.
And if the rains will not come we will squeeze the fresh water out of the ocean to re' fill our lakes. Nothing is beyond our ability. The only thing stopping us is fear of the word "Nuclear."
This is why I wouldn't get and EV for full time use.
MOST OF US ARE A PAYCHECK AWAY FROM BEING HOMELESS, LEARN TO INVEST AND KEEP INVESTING UNTIL IT BECOMES A HABIT.
You are absolutely right.
Though miss-information and lack of financial education leads to negative thinking..have an investment strategy.
Most people are so poor that all they have is money, invest some of it no matter how small, when you invest you are buying a day that you don't have to work.
@Mark Anderson crypto investment, but you will need a professional guide on that.
Facebook 👇
CNBC- It would have helped to hear thoughts from the Public Utility Commission, as well as representatives from several major electric utilites.
forget the representatives. I want to hear from the workers themselves.
@@shanewillbur1325 clearly your on something plans for improvements dont start at the workers you fool personally we could solve this rather fast if government wanted to get involved in making a single road across America for pure automated goods transportation and then another one for construction
They were unavailable for comment
Best comment on here.
I agree - members of the Corporation Commission and representatives of a variety of energy suppliers would have greatly improved the accuracy and enlightenment of this item. The public at large has a very poor understanding of bulk electric power issues - I blame NERC for failing to provide public education - and having the people who deal with the issues would make the discussion relevant.
For military we have 700 billion dollars, but for other stuff.
That's too expensive...
HOW MUCH THE MILITARY SPEND IN THE COUNTRY HELPING THE ECONOMY? HOW MUCH THEY PAY IN TAXES? HOW THEY HELP COMMUNITIES? NOT JUST IN THE U.S. BUT AROUND THE WORLD? OH NEVER MIND, I FORGOT THERE IS PEOPLE THAT NEVER SERVED, AND HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
@@arena2236 The military don´t help comminutes. Look at every place the western militaries have tried to "help" people. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine. Everywhere we get involved they are worse off than they where before. Anyone with half a brain can see the results, regardless of their service record.
@@arena2236 look, I do respect army, infact I tried to join in my early 20s, but couldn't.. I am not degrading army here... What i am saying is spending on infrastructure is equally important.. Otherwise citizen will get offended... Look at China... There spending is half of our... But their infrastructure stand number one.. USA used to be like that, now one single overpass or subway takes years to complete... Because they don't spend on it...
We need upgradation...
@@MrHmm-cv6gs TF are you trying to say? This was like listening to a SIM talk nothing you're saying make sense with the poor grammar and terrible spelling. I legit don't understand what you are trying to say.
Human civilizations have become too accustomed to the conveniences and luxuries that energy brings with it. America, especially, has a culture of excess and consumption, which will make meeting its energy demands even harder. Because it's simply impossible to go back.
Yea lets go back to the 1800's....like the Amish. Can't wait to sweat in the field with my team of horses.
@@fmorgan98 do not flout the lifestyle of those who live simpler than you. They're more self-sufficient and disciplined than you. They'll be surviving just fine while you're panicking over not knowing how to toast your bread.
@@fmorgan98 at least if that happens we can stop hearing about people's preferred pronouns
Absolutely true - the sad part is people desperately hold on to their right to waste what they’ve been given - my favourite example - driving 20 miles to buy a cafe latte in the morning in their 3-ton truck
Nuclear power will be cheap and abundant for everyone. If it isn't then we are being duped.
And we are told to drive an expensive EV? The few EV charging stations outside my neighborhood WholeFood get the electricity from the the same grid that supplies electricity to my home.
Dude here in the “safest” city in Syria we have 45 min electricity every 12 hour. Yes believe me
You should maybe…. Move. Perhaps not live there anymore. People did it before society is can’t be that hard. No sympathy.
@@shasmi93 no stay right there, why the f would you want more refugees coming into the nice places and overcrowding?
@@shasmi93 The second they start moving you'll cry about immigrants taking your jobs.
@@shasmi93 this would be the exact same person who flips out at refugees
@@celticacab9867 I have NO issues with refugees if they are intelligent and work hard like the rest of us. In this case because this person is staying in a city with no power and complaining about it in UA-cam. I’m assuming the intelligence part isn’t there so your probably right about the complaining bit.
The problem is people living the first world country like America they're taking things for granted but that's going to change soon enough..
Actually I believe us Americans take things for granite rather than for granted.
@@emuhill same thing and it's not really Americans alone it's in the Western World in general
WE NEED A METEOR
Another reason as to why we get power outages is because the power lines, transformers, & other equipment are getting really old & they haven't been replaced in over 50 years!
Yea and we also rely on South Korea for making our transformers and they must be shipped here. The U.S. right now has trillions of dollars in major infrastructure needed repairs to EVERYTHING!! Roads, bridges, railroads, streets, drainage, water, sewer, gas, and even water dams. It was estimated to cost $5 TRILLION in the 90's. It will cost much more now because they put it off for 30 years!
Just think…all the money in taxes and highway tolls they take from us - and nothing fixed or updated. Fed Tax, State Tax, Local Tax, Sales Tax, Property Tax etc etc etc tax tax tax - where’s the money?
@@JamesWilliams-jf3hd that's not enough money to repair everything.
*Our general tax pool largely gets wasted on the military.
I've seen them replacing the entire system where I live in central Florida at least, they even cut down some my trees and neighbors trees to make way.
@@JamesWilliams-jf3hd Well federal tax goes to these, 16% Military, 26% Health Care, 23% Social Security, 14% Income Security, 6% on paying interest to foreign loaners, 6% on veteran benefits, & 11% on everything else. The states or city tax is managed differently depending on where you live. 70% of of power are privately owned meaning they’re are the ones that fix it but only do when their is a power outage or something bad happens. They don’t fix it when it needs to be fixed because I believe it eats into their profits.
California closed down 3 nuclear power plants, and is about to close one more. It's difficult to see how this helps anything.
Idiots. Nuclear needs to stay.
The boomer and gen xers getting scared of nuclear has boned us more than almost anything those generations have done.
Then they ask why california power Grid sucks 🤣🤣🤣
I totally understand the issue the US faces with its antiquated electrical grid system. However, as a rule, Americans want there cake and eat it too. Very independent people, Americans. I'm American, living in the Philippines and here, our electric cuts out all the time. Sometimes it's for a few minutes, sometimes it's hours and hours at a time day or night. Very disruptive in hot weather but there's not much we can do about it either. Signs of the times.
Also relying too much on fake unreliable renewable energy
Buy a battery m8 😂
Technically it's eat your cake and have it too.
"....but there's not much we can do about it either"...Why don't you just install solar panels and a battery? Costs have fallen quite a lot over the last few years.
That's the big battle we fight with all of the climate and lifestyle adjustments. Some people aren't invested enough to cut back/eliminate some of the more harmful practices, whether it's driving less to reduce emissions or eating less fast food to help their health. They still want all the fun of doing that thing, but don't want to do the work.
Humanity today can not live without electricity.
“They don’t belong on farmland… because they have to come in and clear-cut and mass-grade the land.”
What does that person think happens on farmland?? If a farmer/landowner wants to have a solar farm built on the land, that’s not a more destructive use than growing most crops, and it’s certainly less water-intensive and chemical-intensive.
Great idea, let's just cover over all the land in America and stop growing crops. What can go wrong ?
With wind, you can dual-use the land: The wind farms take only a tiny amount of space in a field, so you can generate power and farm at the same time. With solar that only works with hand-picked crops like fruits, because the giant harvesting machines for corn can't fit between the support poles for solar panels.
@@thegreataynrand7210 40% of corn and 20% of soybeans is used to make fuel. If that land is used to make electricity it would provide more power. But we don't have to do that because there is plenty of marginal land available. Land that has been stripped mined is useless for almost anything for instance.
@@steven4315 That land can go back to forest and nature. The facts are that if we stupidly try to replace everything with solar and wind we will destroy the environment.
@@thegreataynrand7210 I live in an area that has been strip mined It does not go back to forest or nature.
A lot of talk about global warming but little about the addition of electric cars, a million plus immigrants a year requiring power, everyone now charging their cell phones, etc etc.....
It's not about "heat waves" it's about a decades of neglecting the power grid infrastructure, that needs to be upgraded. But of course "climate change" is the scapegoat
@Yup 😎 some wokist starts a fire in spain during a dry summer. the fire spreads and becomes massive. causing europe to heat up to abnormally high temperature. which then causes water to be used up faster/evaporate faster. causing a drought. get outta here npc
Your statement about neglect is not wrong but climate change is still absolutely a factor in why our grid is still more vulnerable than ever
@Ratio La Nina, Year 3
@@H7B2ify well if THAT upsets you (and so it should), look at the news headlines which say America is sliding into a modernized version of civil war (which the Right is calling for, all the while blaming the Left!).
It’s both
Like George Carlin said, I’m happy this is happening. I’m glad everything is crumbling. Because our society is sick to the core and will never survive
Because anarchy is always wanted by those who feel cheated in a system they failed to win at.
@@grimmlinn Because cheaters use anarchy to fail systems and win. But always loose.
Honestly the biggest problem is selfishness and greed, everyone wants it but nobody wish to move.
And over population. I was born in the mid 1960s and co2 emissions were low, about 320 ppm. Because co2 levels were low, US states would see temperatures drop to 0F in Oregon or Washington. Total co2 emissions from 197 million humans was low. China was decades away from being a prosperous country. USa was the kind of co2 emissions. Now us population is 337 million humans. Co2 is now 420 ppm way above the safe level of 350 parts per million. Earth is heading into a mass extinction. Land Value in the Arctic will climb as land near the southern border becomes uninhabitable.
Building solar farms by destroying farm land and forest land and then building high power transmission lines from the rural to the urban areas opposed by all the communities the lines have to traverse makes no sense when the solar panels should just be installed as canopy panels over the immeasurable amount of square miles of parking lots that we already have in our urban centers. Who does it benefit to clear cut forests and ruin farm land when the parking lots are already available close to the areas of need. Who does it benefit to not build solar infrastructure the more sensible way?
Manfacturing use lot power, if the US really want manufacture back to the country, they really need to fix this problem first.
Also, EVs. As the push for EVs increases so does the need for more power to charge those vehicles. Last I checked we are not building any new power plants. Just dumping trillions on wind and solar farms which have grossly underproduced in the past decade or so. Essentially, we are screwed!
I think it would be good to focus on smaller more local grids, and also to integrate local grids with individual home systems, mostly solar, along with EV cars. Homes could have battery backup, and EV cars also could even out the bumps in demand. The larger the grid, the wider the blackouts, like when a squirrel darkened many states at once.
How would EV cars even out the demand? Also, solar is extremely inefficient and only utilizes 20% of the energy that hits it. The solution is to reduce consumption. We need to 1.Have an EV charging tax to lower the frequency of charges and unnecessary journeys 2.Mandate that AC systems only go down to 27 Celsius 3.Create power limits for home. If they go over the limit they will either pay extra on their next bill or have their electricity cut off.
Battery backup is to expensive to an inherent grid solution that has good reliability
Lemme get this straight, you want to have a bunch of seperate local grids? With how many ebbs and flows there are in usage, unless you wanna have every city install massive battery banks/have their own coal power plant, that just wouldnt work. Not to mention who in their right mind would want to pay for electricity for their EV, go home after a long day of work, and instead of their EV charging for the next day, it gets drained? Just sounds like a texas/Japan (north and south a seperate grids) on a much smaller and WAY worse scale
@@conron3651 you realize that EV charging is currently not free. Nothing would change besides an increase in cost. Also, battery banks make no sense in this instance. I'm saying that there is no better solution than the one we have. We just have to limit its usage.
@@AtillatheFun Oh no no I wasnt commenting in response to your comment lol. I was using that to point out the absurdity of what the OP was saying. Dw I know battery banks arent practical
Running underground high-voltage DC power would lessen susceptibility to interference by cosmic radiation or EMP pulses. It's costly, sure, but if it's installed into a high-speed train tunnel with electric road-vehicle next to it, it would make travel far safer, by eliminating wildlife strikes or bad weather or pretty much anything except earthquakes.
There were stories last month about underground power lines overheating and causing outages during a heat wave. We can’t win
Not to mention that solar flares of M or X Class create an EMP-effect and take down the grid and anything which uses it.
If your gonna do underground I wouldn’t do HVDC. While DC has significantly less loss, you will have to convert it back to AC in order for residential consumers to use it as you step down, which is an entirely new other piece of infrastructure you have to build seperate from the extremely expensive lines.
Let me rephrase and suggest that it really just depends on the distance and overall environment your planning to build in.
HVDC is the piece of the puzzle which is so often missing from these sort of discussions. High voltage AC only works up to a length of about 700 miles. Anything beyond that, such as what would be necessary in the US, has to use HVDC. New Zealand has been using a HVDC line since 1965.
I never understood why we keep our power lines so exposed in most of the South/Southwest US.
Conservatives love seeing them because it reminds them of America in the “great again” era.
Cost. To build transmission infrastructure underground is extremely expensive and hard to maintain. Overhead is cheaper and easier to repair. Something happens you send a drone and find the issue then drive to it. Meanwhile underground needs more in-depth inspection and harder repairs. It is essentially building a pipeline with a power line in it. You need 20' spacing for a 500kv line which means you are looking at 40 wide excavation.
It's about cost, distance, and amount of customers in a given area.
You are referring to how things work in densely populated cities . There are a lot of customers per square mile. They can all contribute towards the excavations and maintenance involved in an underground system.
Now let's consider a small town or ranches in the US southwest. There are few ratepayers in a large area.
The cost of burying an electric system would be more than the ratepayers are capable of paying.
Here in Saskatchewan we expect the power to go out every time there is a strong wind lol.
Now stop that! You just have weak provincial politicians with no vision or goals for the future.
"Clear-cutting farmland"... what?? First, there's significant farmland in this country that needs to be fallow for a long period of time due to intense irrigation use, lowering water tables, and soil infertility. Also, solar and wind projects (especially wind) can coexist with farming, pollinator vegetation, and other land-restoring vegetation.
This is making it seem like growing corn and soybeans for decades until land is totally baron (a common practice in the U.S. is somehow a better alternative).
I"m in Vermont and there are many solar farms that sit on land that can't be used for farming for whatever reason be it that it is too hard, too rocky or just too incompatible with crops. Also, there is so much farmland being bought by developers who then build massive subdivisions. Most of the farmers around here will rotate their crops. Corn for x number of years on this field and then alfalfa for x number of years and so on and so forth. Admitably (sp?), not every farmer does this, but the good ones do.
Its ALL a smokescreen. Many more worse things is about to come very soon, SOONER than you think.
Yep agrivoltaics have been a thing for 30 years now and every farmer that uses it is confused on why other farms are so dam resistant to it.
Like it helps reduce wind and rain and hail damage and it reduce flooding and water evaporation.
You realize that 2 California sized pieces of land are needed to create enough energy to replace our current gas and coal power which will cause massive environmental devastation as well as create a very unreliable grid
@@thegreataynrand7210 that isn’t true at all and I’m sure running coal for ever will be very beneficial to our land.
My step son and his dad are both Journeyman linemen.. Our power grid is in serious bad shape and there's NO WAY you will have everyone driving around charging EV cars around. PIPE DREAM HYPE!!
and that's assuming that the average person can afford to buy a new vehicle.
@@jennifertarin4707 are you telling me the average person can’t afford an $80,000 ev? Have I been lied to? Nah the progressives really love me and care about me, I just know it
Residential rooftop solar + batteries will ease the transition. Not 100%. But it's a good idea for rural & suburban. Urban? Uhhh....
Home solar helps with that, oil isn't always gonna be around
@@pavels5600 That's NOT the answer I know people who have them. $40,000 to install.. The panels and batteries have to be replaced every 10 years. They get paid back by electric company $115 a month selling back energy they stored up. You have to pay to have them installed then removed to replace roof and re-installed again!! The charges RACK UP! It's NOT THE ANSWER. Solar panels also contain toxic metals that are filling up landfills. No, it's not the answer and solar fields that my family have installed are also not the answer. They take up large spaces of land, some areas will be forced to cut down trees, destroy the environment then cut down more trees for the main transmission lines to the power company.
I support New Green Electricity... But lets make sure we can make more than we need before taking the old plants offline.
Also, old is not bad... Some stuff was made to last, like the hoover dam; Its just a lot of stuff made more recently, is made to fail after 20 years, because money.
Trying to shut down coal and nuclear power plants well expecting green energy to replace it seems to be the main factor especially for CA and Germany.
Me: who lives in Cali where it is 80 degrees this summer and never had a black out this summer :)
How will all the electric cars get energy starting 2026 35% of all new cars must be electric?
Where in California and totally on the grid?
@@Scottar50 Irvine
Anyone with the right senses will admit that this problem is self-created given the technological advances n amount of resources going from wars to wars this great empire has.
In Texas, I'm living under constant extreme heat. I had my electronics, including TVs, computers, and even most kitchen appliances, shut down all summer due to constant threats of blackouts. I have not cooked a decent meal since June. And I don't expect to get the stuff back up until at least November since 2022 is already the hottest year on record.😭
Can't you use a propane grill?
You don’t have to do all that
Use Propane, it's more efficient than electric stoves.
Leave Texas
they shut down from the threat of blackout? what does that mean
140,000 miles of transmission lines
$700,000 million, $700 billion
$ 5 million a mile.
Boy, its almost as if we stopped giving hundreds of billions of dollars to other countries, we could more afford to fix our grid.
In my nieghborhood fallen trees and drunk drivers hitting the power poles account for 90 percent of the blackouts. The other 10 was from lightning stricking my nieghbors house service line and we shared the same transformer. The power company had to turn it off to reconnect a new service line. Power goes out atleast twice a year.
I'm paraphrasing: "The way our county LOOKS is far more important than slowing or stopping climate change". I hope you feel that way in 5 years, or 10.
She was talking about cutting down forests to make solar farms. She's right. It doesn't make sense when we already have so many human-made surfaces.
@@borealphoto Worse, photovoltaic solar is already at toxic proportions in the West. California alone sees generation relative to load drop by more than 10 MW over three hours near sundown in late Spring, just as loads begin to peak. Not all generation sources can ramp up that fast. Hydro can but it is heavily committed already. Coal can't keep up, and neither can nuclear (but it can help). Preventing instability depends mostly on natural gas fired plants that represent about 46% of the electricity supply in Arizona. We are getting that natural gas by fracking; in the mid '70s the natural gas supply was so short new housing had no natural gas pipes. It is not a stretch to say that large amounts of photovoltaic solar requires fracking.
What climate change? Stop spreading propaganda.
Lets go to 25 years and the mountains of solar cells and batteries polluting the enviorment because they can't be recycled. Of course we could all be dead by then as most people have microplastic in their body or mabe we all die from malaria because all the bats were killed by wind farms or massive solar farms have drastically altered the weather
@@davidscott9572 You should write a book, that sounds like a fascinating apocalyptic fiction. Batteries CAN be recycled. Solar cells CAN be recycled (they're already good for about 10 years, at which point they are down to about 80% efficiency - and STILL capable of working for years to come) You really just sound like a negative Nancy to me. Are you saying we should just ignore climate change and carry on burning fossil fuels until everyone dies from starvation? Learn something, then come back and reply, because right now, you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
We waste food and power - the only way to stop it is to raise the price
Hey here’s a great idea! Put solar panels over parking lots! Cover every parking lot in the US with solar panels and I guarantee you’d have more power than you’d ever need. Stop cutting down forests for them. Added perk is there would be plenty of shady parking spots and you wouldn’t have to plow the spots.
You'll just have to plow the solar panels instead 🙃
Problem is you have shady parking lots, surrounded by tall buildings. You also have support structures, transformers and power lines.
@@Bloated_Tony_Danza doesn’t matter if they’re above a field or a parking lot the snowfall isn’t gonna be any different. Solve it the same way you do when you have it in a field.
@@michaeloreilly657 ok metropolitan areas make up a small fraction of the land in the US. All the parking lots in the suburbs don’t have all those tall buildings. All your Walmarts, shopping malls, grocery stores, schools, sports stadiums, etc have tons of parking spaces that are wide open and unobstructed by trees and buildings
@@USCNE96 With all do respect, you're being too logical and believe they're trying to solve this problem. They're not, it's a sham. Just take a step back and think about the segment. One guy talks about the Tesla and the Lady talks about more efficient appliances. Why would they make a push for EVs that get plugged into an aging system? Why the focus on just Solar and Wind? Why not explore all options? The reality is no one country can solve pollution problems because that pollution just gets shifted to other countries. For example what do batteries need? Cobalt and Lithium. Okay how do you get it? Oh you have to mine for it. So is an EV really green? Not really.
We need more nuclear power plants. It will reduce carbon foot print (green friendly) and it will make power more cheaper than using our traditional ways of making electricity with coal. Nuclear power plants won't impact climate at all & its safe. Thats why a lot of people in high places or notable ones are talking about it but politicians and citizens don't want it because of the way nuclear energy is depicted in movies or in the media, they just hear "Nuclear" & think the worst like armageddon.
The Inflation Reduction Act includes green tax credits for nuclear, so that's a step in the right direction from the Feds at least.
Except there's 3 big problems with large scale nuclear rollout:
1) where do you get the fuel? Nuclear looks like it requires fairly little fuel st first, but if you scale it up to cover sjgnificant prtions of not only current electricity demand, but also heating and transportation energy demand in the future, nuclear fuel reserves suddenly dkn't look to grest.
2) cost. It is significantly cheaper both to build and to operate massive renewable rollouts combined with some storage and a decent amount of High volate DC power lines to adjust production/demand spikes.
3) water. With droughts all over the world, but especialy the US with it's depleted aquifiers in large parts of the country, warer is getting pretty scsrce. And nuclesr requires a lot of water. One of the reasons france is currently screwed is because they had to turn of reactors due to water shortages on top of the maintenance and damage related shutdowns.
Edit:
'Large scale rollout' refers to just how much nuclesr power might be build, not the individual reactor/power plant output.
@@spacetoast7783 "Inflation Reduction Act" ....does absolutely nothing to 'reduce' inflation.
@@reappermen It's only "cheaper" to build out and operate "renewables" due to massive government subsidies which are 'unsustainable' (oh the irony of it). And no, France isn't shutting down reactors due to water shortages. That's totally false information. The claim was that they were removed from the grid due to maintenance and age issues. Ironically, "sustainable" sources of energy are not actually sustainable at all. Economically or environmentally. Which massive open pit mining operations are we getting the lithium and rare earths from for all of these batteries? What happens when those die and they need to be dealt with? Green energy is a fantasy.
@@Astrobucks2 I'm sorry you feel that way, but basic economics disagrees with you. Cutting deficits is deflationary. Regulating monopolies can deflate costs as well.
If you are talking about the modernization of the power system network, It is quite disconcerting that CNBC has not invited to a power system engineer for this analysis... Come on CNBC, you are better than that man... On the other hand, If you have such type of "not in my backyard" troubles in USA, there is already a solution for that... Have you ever seen the offshore grid developments that are being currently carried out in Europe? I mean, this "not in my backyard" trouble takes some much useless discussions that at the end of the day only lead to unpleasant and unnecessary delays... So in short, a serious policy maker typically would say: "if your backyard is a problem, then I'll construct in the middle of the Sea where there is not such of type of problematic individuals"...
However, the real point of constructing offshore wind farms in the middle of the sea is that you (at least) would need to know:
1) Where exactly do you want to construct in the sea in order to minimize the environmental impact? (biologist concern)
2) How deep is the seafloor where you are planning to construct the offshore wind turbines? (civil engineering concern)
3) As the wind tends to be less volatile as soon as you are far away from the shore (ask to a sailor about this), then what type of technology are you going to use for transmitting far offshore wind power to an onshore network? (transmission system operator concern)
Good luck guys and Maxwell's Laws be with you !
Regards from Europe :)
Saw an article that offshore wind farms are affecting the weather so mabe England severe heat wave has more to do with turning the cooling ocean breeze into energy than letting it be a cooling breeze
This problem is not just for US but for every other countries consuming renewable energy. Informative docu!!
The last time I went through a power outage was 2003 when the remnants of Isabel went through Maryland.
Only lasted about three hours. Just minor power hits since then…all weather related. And that’s spread out over various states, since I’ve moved around a bit after retirement.
I’ve had backup generator power for years…never had to use it.
This is pseudo-journalism. A good piece on this issue would explain the real way in which electricity is created and transferred to households or companies and what is the main reason (within the same process) explaining the increasing unreliability of the grid. However, the bias of the interviewees only leads us to vague assertions like “there are more power outages because the climate is changing” or “the system is old”.
The other way in which the bias of the video is seen is in how the unreliability of solar and wind is barely mentioned. We know that these forms of energy have massive peaks which depend heavily on gas to smooth them out. Saying that someday and somehow this issue will be solved is worthy of a horoscope in a magazine; not on CNBC.
And isn't it so convenient to blame 'climate change' and therefore throw up our hands helplessly? It's pathetic.
Sheep follow
Those assertions are not inaccurate though….
ANL literally runs regional grid outage exercises with utilities, emergency responders, state governments, ISOs, RTOs, RCCS, FERC and NERC to prepare agencies for future major natural and human disasters
It's not bad all over. There are some regions that work quite well, especially where I live in the Pacific NW, USA. There are occasional nuisance outages that last briefly because some idiot plowed into a utility pole, a building fire and the like. My last outage lasted 20 minutes, before that it had been years. No rolling blackouts.
Those with electric vehicles are making it worse.
Consulting for a major utility, it varies greatly. Some operators are pretty good and others are jokes. The one I consult has 0 spares and limited back ups. We are spending billions and just cannot get enough material. That is the part that concerns me. If everything keeps running the grid will be fine but damage and losses are hard to replace quickly.
I am 100% off grid, using solar. I haven’t skipped a beat..expect for missing out on the power outages :)
Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware!
my hero: justin hunt
But that's not reality for the masses who can't even afford a home, not enough minerals, land nor grid infrastructure for everyone to have solar. Eventually the panels will fail or wear out and solar panels are not very recyclable. And solar panels are very vulnerable to severe weather events.
I live in California, and I already have three portable power stations (all different brands) charged up for an extended power outage. I'm planning on buying a 4th power station.
northern? middle? southern?
just buy a petrol generator? if you are having extended outage to the point that you are having 3-4 power stations to get through then a petrol generator would be far cheaper and reliable (you can just go buy more petrol if the outage is even longer than expected to keep running)
Even small cities have many flat-roof buildings. Why use farmland for solar installations when every roof can have solar panels tied to the grid? The power is generated locally and would not need to be transmitte over great distances except when there are local problems.
Because energy companies want to protect their monopoly, people tend to own the solar panels on their rooves of their buildings. They therefore have a right to the solar that comes from them. Big energy companies can buy agricultural and lumber land for cheap, buy a million of the same model of solar panels to reduce the individual unit cost, and use those savings to build a line to the city, where they can keep the population dependent on them for electricity, protecting their monopoly. Capitalism is good when there is competition, when there is no competition it trends towards dictatorship/monarchy.
Great video and amazing speakers. More Susan Ralston, please!
Today, About 50% of ZERO Co2 Electricity is from nuclear the rest from ‘renewables’. There would be far less climate change urgency if nuclear had been expanded rather than shut down over the last forty years (worldwide). New generation ‘walk away safe’ MSR nuclear generates 97% less nuclear waste with far shorter half life. Some designs RUN on old nuclear waste … New nuclear is an absolute no brainer because it doesn’t need the insanely expensive storage that intermittent ‘renewables’ require.
Honestly, at least being from California where it's always sunny, it makes sense to just buy solar panels and the cost on in house battery packs is coming down drastically. I'm sure in three or four years it'll be cheaper to just disconnect your house from the grid altogether.
This is also because electricity in california is multiples more expensive than the national average
California is a horribly run state
If you have a house, and never need to leave it.
You do realize this is a big part of why California has blackouts in the first place often too much solar and none during the evening hours when everyone gets home.
@@seanthe100 but in a few years when you can add a battery pack to your house for 5k instead of 30k, we won't need to worry about that. We won't have to worry about power outages or anything, we can tell Edison and PG&E to go shove it. The reason I have solar already it's because it's cheaper then paying the power company. Power companies here charge a lot more than the rest of the U.S. and they raise rates drastically every time they burn down some small town, or California mandates they stop using some type of "dirty" power. So the $40,000 solar array will cost substantially less money then the power companies will charge you because it will last 25 years, you're effectively only paying $133 a month for power. Once the batteries come down low enough to fit into that equation I don't see a reason to be connected to the grid.
This is equivalent to recycling. Passing the responsibility to the users alone is NOT going to address the problem, the providers have to absorb some of the cost of the problem or the improvement or replacement of the infrastructure.
Not gonna happen they only know how to take money from us, not help. I bet most of those lines were set up by taxpayer funded subsides to boot. They always take but never give.
US gov gets nothing done.
So climate change experts think that the climate change is the most important factor in grid issues. And not the climate change activists causing retirement of fossil fuel plants that can be operated more flexibility and brought online quickly? Recently, Texas WAS close to having too much demand for supply. That was because the winds were very calm and the wind power that the grid was counting on was not there. Not hyperbole. Look at the data.
Actually, the biggest factor is demand, not less fossil fuel plants, their is more fossil fuel production than ever before. Not percentage wise, but in absolute numbers. Also Texas isn't connected to the rest of national grid so it can't participate when weather shifts.
You can keep building fossil fuel plants, but long term you'll run out.
Even if you said: we'll build nuclear only from now on, because climate change, with current technology, we'll run out in less than 50 years of that too.
The bigger problem is actually water. Current issues are already caused by climate change.
Society as we know it will not last an other 50 years unless we make some radical changes. We are to late to make the simple changes needed to fix the problems we already have. And much bigger changes are coming. Climate immigration is already happening. And demand for AC will skyrocket and put an even higher demand on energy usage.
But around the world we have is politicians who can't look further than the next elections so probably nothing will be done. That said, something like the inflation reduction act and similar legislation around the world is at least something. Probably not enough.
Peak phosphorus is an other issue we'll have in probably less than 100 years.
@@autohmae Demand is only a problem if you prevent supply from growing. If the EPA prevents you from extracting natural gas (Germany shuts down), and if they require prohibitively expensive retrofitting of power plants only needed for peak generation, or if woke local government owned power companies just scrap them and leave their local demand vastly outstripping generation, then you have a problem. But the people fleeing California and New York are not the problem. It's supply.
Also, if you did some research you would see the only places with black outs and brown outs this summer are on the main national grid. ERCOT is just fine (although the media never miss a chance to make the slant about Texas negative).
Sadly in Mexico we are like 30 times worse than the US about our electrical system.
Every week, my tropical city face a electrical grid and the infraestructure is so old in the entire country
Que pena, amigo.
It's called wind and solar energy are inefficient.
I dont understand this. I'm a truck driver i drive all over the country non stop. Haven't heard of any substantial increase in blackouts...
Power outages has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with an outdated system/infrastructure and protocols/standards written in the 1970s. A lot has drastically changed from the 1970s. From the growing population, city skylines, air traffic, rural areas, etc,. How would those protocols/standards apply today? Not to mention, and for example, I am a business owner, and landlord. With that said, by law, I am required - there are vital services in which a landlord/business owner has to provide for their tenants/employees. These include, water, heat, air conditioning, maintained stucture, etc, once again, by law. Every year, by law the furance, air conditioner, water tank, etc., has to be serviced. The dwelling also gets inspected from the roof, down. If anything isn't up to code, it gets shut down. If the furance, water tank, etc, needs to be replaced - you have no choice but to replace it. I, do not charge my employees/tenants a fee for these services, (automatically taken it out of their paycheck, rent/lease). My point is, the electrical company does. The electrical company charges every costumer a fee to keep their system up to date. Question is, where is the money going and who are they paying off when inspection time comes round? The electrical system isn't up to code. Why aren't they being fined? And, since the electrical system is heavily regulated by the government, why isn't the government stepping in? Finally, governments all over the world have implemented an "electrical vechile" policy. If and when that becomes the case, how do you think the electrical system will fair then? We are already in a dire state, blackouts and all. Imagine when it's nothing but electrical vehicles on the road.
Everybody is going to need some kind of renewable energy system for their house and a backup battery. We have had solar for 20 years, have a small power backup system (the electricity has been out in the neighborhood over 6 hours and has probably 6 hours more to go - but most everything in the house is working including internet), and we bought a 2017 Chevy Volt in 2020 which gets 50 electric miles before gas. We rarely buy gasoline.
@@humblecourageous3919 Do you charge your Volt off of your solar panels alone? I didn't think so.
@@Cwra1smith Yes, we do charge out Volt from our solar panels.. We only have a 3.5 KW system but we got a $28 rebate. We made 1,300 KW more than we used last year. So we do charge the Volt on our solar system. Our two next door neighbors have 7 KW systems. They make more energy than their whole house A/C, swimming pool, and all their other energy needs combined uses. We have a mini split for 3 rooms and we filled our swimming pool about 15 years ago. It used too much energy as the pump had to run 8 hours in the summer, 6 hours in the spring and fall, and 4 hours in the winter. We also were not using it hardly at all.
So here's what you do. You take some of that military budget (there's plenty to spare) and you keep building out wind and solar, but you also build out nuclear, and also beef up the grid interconnects. Hell, run it like the interstate project was (though maybe without destroying poor neighborhoods). Also build out high speed trains as those are way more efficient at moving people and stuff than basically anything else. You'll always have areas where trains or EVs won't fit the bill (at least for now) but they can handle most of the population, and most is better than doing nothing. And we don't have to do just one thing. We can do them all.
High-speed trains are actually far less efficient than low-speed trains. The construction of the high-speed rail network demands far more resources (steel, concrete, diesel and man-hours) and driving the trains demands far more energy.
Cutting our military is never the option. There's plenty of money elsewhere we spend 5x more on healthcare than the military
Cutting military always sounds like a good idea till stuff hits the fan. Can't undo those cuts quickly.
The US budgeted about $600 billion to the armed forces in 2021. NERC estimated 20 years ago $500 billion was needed to modernize the North American grids. I guarantee you there is not enough money there to make a difference.
Better reduce the pay of politicians to minimum wage cut all their health care and pensions and use that money to upgrade the grid forget about rail as that system is more outdated than the electric grid
Electiric cars, old power grid, we keep building too fast/much and not upgrading our infrastructure
Utitities need to incentive individual production of energy by encouraging solar and or wind on homes, farms, factories, and buildings and allowing the individual owner to be paid for that energy when supply exceeds usage. Distributed sources of power production add resilience to the grid. A decentralized grid is more practical for such a diverse geography as found in the USA.
The first non-EV suitable battery tech that makes it to the market for homes at scale is going to make a fortune.
Funny about that … and people still think Tesla is only a car company!
Home electric storage battery has been around since 2014, there are currently at least 6 providers plus Tesla, even so Tesla has a backlog of 6 months in the markets that it sells. The problem is not a product for energy storage, is ability of this products. More battery production is needed.
I wonder how much the graph @2:37 is due to increase population in those areas so more people are affected and not because it's gotten worse in the sense of spread.
Looking on that kind of statics population changes mater but they don't change the picture.
Yeah people move to ares like Texas, but those changes aren't enough to attribute to the huge change in the graphic
Everyone wants growth, jobs, two story McMansions with 2 or 3 AC units with a pool pump, schools with world class stadiums, etc. All of that needs power and we will need to keep up. Virtual power plants of distributed battery packs are the quickest and easiest way to solve for this. We can generate and transport plenty of power we just need to be able to store it for use during peak demand and weather events.
The music is so ominous lmaooo
Local conservation districts also oppose the expansion of high transmission lines because of the of local environmental considerations. The US law gives a lot of power to local governments to resist large scale power lines and gas lines.
This is an big issue in many developments.
This is why we don't have enough housing.
Americans in any state: *loses power for 5 minutes* "The world is ending!"
Puerto Ricans after a 3 month outage: "first time?"
puetro rico is a third-world dump.
🤣
As an American, I have been through numerous power outages that were longer than 5 minutes. I certainly didn't think the world was ending. Some of those outages ended up being quite long. Had to get ice and dry ice for the freezer and fridge.
Since 2005, the USA has not added much, if any generating capacity. All these experts failed to mention this. They are all on tangents and not the main issue. Expanding the grid will not help much if there is no source energy there.
Canada is trying to help America in meeting its energy needs, but Congress just puts up roadblocks.
Yet generation is still greater than annual consumption
My college dorm had blackouts bc the electrical was very old and we have so many electronics now. I went and told them my plans and what needed to get done they told me don't worry about.
Your college dorm was probably designed before it not only had to charge everyone phone but gaming is a massive power draw mabe power should be restricted to needs not wants
@@davidscott9572 correct it was like 60years old
@@JJacobs803 they should raise tuition 400 percent and upgrade the grid so you can play video games
@@davidscott9572 they actually has the cheapest tutuin I the state
@@JJacobs803 I think you mean tuition not tutuin mabe their cheap for a reason the original complaint was their outdated underpowered electrical grid
Currently there are 7.2 million data centers in the world, according to the German statistics office. The US has 2,670, by far the most.
Data storage and transmission in and from data centers use 1% of global electricity
The information and communications technology (ICT) sector predicts to use 20 percent of all the world’s electricity by 2025 and emit up to 5.5 percent of all carbon emission. This doesn't account for the mining/forging silica for semiconductors, nor an all EV market.
The energy, infrastructure, nor the funds exist to make this happen.
Here in Ireland, data centres will use nearly a third of all of Ireland’s electricity consumption within the next few years. And they’re warning already about power disruption this winter, and you can be sure the data centres will be the last to lose power if anything happens to our supply
@@celticacab9867 In Denmark they use the water used for cooling their data centres to heat local homes - which isn't a solution to their electricity consumption but is quite cool.
Solar sure ain’t gonna make it any better
Why not?
@@spacetoast7783 Because when the sun doesn't shine, the power goes out.
@@Astrobucks2 It's a good thing nobody is saying that solar should be the only source of energy around the clock.
We need more fission plants, and fusion plants in the future, if it's possible.
Truth
Our power grid will never be the same again, no matter who is in charge - Democrat or Republican. Both are, it seems, incapable of doing anything unless their pockets get lined, so, it looks like if you can’t build out your own personal grid, you’re in trouble.
*I AM SO PLEASED I LIVE IN THE EU* the people that run this seem to understand that *INFRASTRUCTURE* is everything...
We have new roads, new power UHVDC power lines, new bridged - admittedly the new gas pipes are not empty, they did screw that up. But at least they BUILT them...
Where electricity prices are high and people can't afford to even keep their home heated or cooled, and relying of foreign countries for fuel and power, especially Russia.
What % of total US blackouts happen in Texas?
Forcing mandatory EVs does not make sense when the electric grid is having trouble keeping up with current demand.
No more Americans coming to South Africa and getting shocked by loadshedding 😂😂😂
Very interesting... This is a global problem, but unfortunately it is the Global North that is bearing the brunt due to extreme weather. This will force it to innovate and lead the world in designing and building the next generation of electricity grid infrastructure.
Europe is doing fine, our evil socialist electricity grid(s) gets upgraded as and when they needs to be because electricity is extremely important and isn't owned by a handful of rich shareholders who don't want to dip into their profits.
A big part of the problem is that everybody and their grandmother went to college and now nobody understands how to actually build, maintain, and operate electrical power distribution systems. Who's going to run the wire? Where's the wire going to come from? Do they even know where the wires are supposed to go? No. We're just going to magically expect "technology" to save the day. "Someone somewhere will fix this and it sure as hell won't be me, all we gotta do is buy this product. How's it work? No clue"
They don’t want to get their hands dirty anymore 🤦
Imagine the humans - if we continue like this 🤦 That’s why there is such a push for AI and Robotics. Let the Robots do the field work 🤦
Lol idk where you’re at but I’m in rural Ohio and I know a lot of the kids I graduated with went into electrical. There are some really good apprenticeship programs here where you get paid while you learn the trade. It’s takes 3-4 years but you end up at $30+ an hour plus benefits. It’s a good job
Umm Electical Engineers?
You know what's ironic, I'm always hearing about all this old stuff in America. The houses are old, the electric grid, roads and bridges so how is it everything has gone up a fortune. It is rediculus lol we're paying a fortune for things that have been paid for over and over again.
Dont worry they just released a bill to build more windmills
A glaring example of the US national decline in utilities management and innovation. Still, somehow, the federal government manages to spend 8 billion dollars (and counting) on the war in Ukraine. Supporting the common good, even when it is a vital necessity, appears to be impossible for America. We are merely electricity junkies living in a growing large slum.
So the current 8 billion on the Ukraine war is the issue and not the roughly 600 billion total military spending or the lack of infrastructure investments for decades?
@@adrianbuck8772 yes
I'm sure the issue is that 1% of the foreign policy budget, which itself is less than 20% of the federal budget.
Now it's over 60 or 65 billions that were send to Ukraine
@@Skay24 What makes you feel like that is happening?
Increased dependence on unreliable energy sources like solar and wind, and decreased reliance on sources like nuclear.
And from what I've heard, most of the US grid is above ground. Here in Europe we try to place as much as possible underground, so the power doesn't go down as soon as there's a bit of bad weather. The last power outage I had here that wasn't planned (when they have to work on the grid, they have to turn it off) was in 2008 (2 hours or so).
Underground power infrastructure has a much shorter life span and Europe is a bunch of small countries while the US is around 3,000 miles wide with land like Alaska and Hawaii which aren't directly attached to the mainland so to bury all of the power grid alone would be trillions and much more difficult to repair when something goes wrong.
@@KILLKING110 A number of valid points. but how much money has already been spent to repair the grid every time there's a bit of wind or snow. And in some places an above ground line is probably best (we still have those in some places as well) but locations with a lot of problems (tornado alley, Florida, the more northern states with winter outages) might think about it.
In Europe there are many customers per square kilometer. Especially in densely populated cities. Also your cities are fairly close together.
Portions of tge US east coast is like that.
But the cost of burying the existing power lines within cites would be very expensive.
In most parts of the western USA and Canada towns and cites might be 100 to 1000 km from each other. The towns and even cities are not that densely populated. So the cost of a buried system would be extremely expensive per customer.
What works in Europe does not usually make sense in most of the USA.
Just for fun compare the total square kilometers of your country to a single random US state west of the Mississippi River. One state might be larger than your country. Then look at how many people live in those states. You will learn why the US and Canadian grid are not buried. Economics.
@@KILLKING110 Europe has the largest synchronous grid in the world, so the argument of small countries doesn't work in this case.
At 7:50 it says 140,000 miles of transmission lines will have to be replaced at a cost of $700 billion. That works out to $5 million per mile. While I know this type of work is not cheap $5 million per mile sounds excessive. This is about the same cost per mile to build a 4-lane highway.
I mean that’s the military budget for this year alone. It’s definitely doable and we have the money
Should have listened to Nikola Tesla...now we have to re-discover the basic principles of energy and power all over again.
Distributive and centralized renewable (NON FOSSIL FUEL power sources) like roof top solar, wind, geo-thermal, nuclear and tidal generation are absolutely necessary. I wish everyone in the world could see what the environmental future will be like by 2042.
THEN they would demand CO2 reduction on a gigantic scale!
Decentralisation is the only way
Renewables require fossil fuels for their manufacturing and disposal. Nuclear is the best way to go but we will still need FF to build them and for many byproducts that go into things like plastics.
Totally disagree with solar farms. This one of the most important ways to deal with the lack of energy we are having. There is plenty of land to use for solar and wind. Which do we want. Coal burning power plants and natural gas. Or even nuclear? No we need solar and wind. Maybe an eye sour for a few but sure makes it a lot easier for our children in the future. Yes I know solar and wind have a carbon foot print. Over the life of the solar and wind energy devices we come out ahead. Stop being part of the problem and become the solution.There are no more excuses.
How do we get reliable power when there’s not enough sunlight due to cloudy, foggy weather?
Where do you dispose of all those solar panels (laden with heavy metals) when they run their course?
If the USA had ZERO emissions starting tomorrow, what percentage of global impact would we have on CO2 emissions?
Look at Germany right now and how they are struggling with a system that tried to go 100% green.
Agrisolar can actually make farmland more productive if done right. So solar can belong on agricultural land.
I've worked on the grids. The grid going down due to weather, is more often than not old equipment from corrosion and rot, not more severe weather. I love the fact your" EXPERTS" Have never repaired downed power lines . They're college kids that have never worked an honest day's work.
I mean to be fair they’re talking to the CEO of NERC…….
NERC manages the reliability constraints of the entire North American Electrical Grid from Canada, US and Mexico - so while he may not be talking a specific impacts in a particular area he’s not just shmuck……
@@brian2440 I've retired recently. Most of the managers when I started worked their way up from lineman to supervisor to management. The last 15 to 20 years , human resources hires and college kid with an MBA who wouldn't know AC from DC. Bad decisions follow in a cost savings that's false. They put off maintaining with an approach that we can replace it after it's destroyed in a storm. The problem is explaining to people why they've no electricity for weeks. So it's bandaids and bailing wire. Result, grid gets weeker.. This approach has been happening for years now. Upgrading the grid is going to be a nightmare. Get ready for prolonged blackouts.
@@brian2440 in 2009 I did an inspection of a stretch of high tension lines in the North East. A third were in need of repair/replacement due to soil erosion, corrosion, and overgrowth of vegetation. Nothing was done until Hurricane Sandy came up the East Coast. Every structural failure was noted on the 2009 assessment. Repairs took weeks and were still no more than bandaids and bailing wire. I'm retired and have my own generator. Want to guess why? Our grid is not maintained and upgraded as needed. In 2010 I pulled components out dated 1957. Gee, they failed, I wonder why? Too many MBA'S and no hands-on knowhow today.
@@kurtrobinson1926 I understand, but that doesn’t mean NERC doesn’t know what they’re talking about