- How long can you and your neighbors stay safe
without electricity?
(foreboding music)
The answer depends a lot on the weather.
Extreme temperature
is one of the most deadly natural hazards.
From a deep freeze as far south as Texas
to a triple digit heat wave in the Pacific Northwest,
2021 was a year that might indicate
what we could expect in the future.
Both the Texas and Pacific Northwest events
had death tolls in the hundreds, which is tragic,
but we need to wrap our minds around the potential
for a hurricane Katrina level catastrophe or even worse
as our electrical grid ages
and weather becomes more extreme.
And according to experts, we have a long way to go.
- We have all of these assets that we've deployed
over a hundred years, all of this infrastructure
that we built for a climate that is no longer relevant,
right, for a climate that we are routinely exceeding.
So in some ways we have to expect
that failures will play out.
We need to be prepared for failures
in a different way than we've been in the past.
- There've been 60% more power outages since 2015.
But to fully understand what's possible,
we need to look a little further into the past.
- We look at, for example, the 2003 Northeast blackout
as a great example of a cascading failure.
You had, you know, a few downed transmission lines
in Ohio that ultimately trigger a series of events
that lead to most of the Northeast not having electricity
for a prolonged period of time.
And we see these sort of failures play out
somewhat frequently during extreme events.
- [Maiya] And according to experts,
there's plenty we can do to prepare,
but we have a long way to go.
During extremes, especially with temperature,
loss of power is deadly.
But calculating deaths from temperature events is difficult
because most are caused by existing medical conditions
made more deadly by temperature.
During the Northeast blackout,
it was hot, but it wasn't extreme.
Still nearly a hundred additional deaths were reported.
The Texas power failure was far smaller,
but it was extremely cold.
700 deaths were reported by Buzzfeed.
During the Northwest heat wave,
blackouts for short and local,
but the New York times found 600 additional deaths.
- The risk of large-scale blackouts and brownouts
is pretty significant
because we use electricity as sort of the backbone
for our lifelines, for our lifeline services.
Of course, electricity is needed for air conditioning
during the extreme heat events.
It's needed in hospitals.
Electricity is needed for pumping water.
- [Maiya] In extreme temperatures,
heating and cooling are lifelines that require lots of power.
And utilities have to match that demand perfectly
to the millisecond.
When demand is high, there can be brief interruptions
like when you turn on the microwave and the lights dim.
But imagine that on a larger scale.
- How do you go from a small scale
to a large scale black out?
You've got a power system that's being pushed
to its limits.
By that I mean, you are demanding a lot of it
relative to its design, right?
And you know, it's basically getting close to its capacity.
- [Maiya] To understand capacity,
let's first look at how the power system meets demand
with Kyri Baker.
- So the power plant generates electricity,
at a certain voltage.
Then they have a transformer at the power plant
that steps up the voltage for high voltage transmission.
And we want to do that because if we bump up the voltage,
we lower the current
and lowering the current helps lower losses.
So power is transmitted at really high voltages.
Then it's stepped down for smaller commercial
and residential buildings.
We're talking supply and demand balance within sub-seconds.
It really needs to be instantaneously working
all of the time.
So if that doesn't happen,
if there's one failure in the system,
it can cause these cascading effects
where a bunch of failures start to happen.
- For example, what you might have is a scenario
where thousands of houses are cranking up their AC
during a heat event
and the substation is having to do a lot more work,
but it's a lot hotter outside than it normally is,
which means there's an efficiency loss.
The substation can't work as hard as it normally does,
because if it did, it would overheat.
We might get to a scenario where it can't manage
that dynamic fast enough, such that it trips,
it automatically shuts off.
Matter of fact, we design it to shut off.
- The problem with transformers is that
they are also conductors.
If there's too much power that's being pushed
through that wire, it's going to heat up
and in some cases it's going to overheat
and catch on fire.
So we're getting these situations where there's transformers
that are getting pushed past their limits,
catching on fire and in some drastic cases exploding.
- [Maiya] But electricity is still moving through the grid.
So it instantly floods other substations
which could be pushed past their capacity as well.
And transformers are not the only liability.
The US has over 5 million miles of power lines.
- It's not uncommon to see with hotter temperatures,
sagging of lines.
You know, apower line coming into contact with a tree
where you might get effectively a short of electricity
and that line has to trip off.
And you might see other substations
that trip themselves off
because all of a sudden, you know,
they can't adjust themselves to the new conditions
that are playing out.
- [Maiya] Of course, the same is true
of severe winter weather if ice, snow, and trees fall
on power lines.
- So this is the cascade, right?
So, one or a few go offline
and then a few more might go offline
and then a few more might go offline.
And the more that that happens,
the larger and larger and larger of a territory
that you have that is offline without power.
- The US has those three main AC grids,
Western Interconnection, Eastern Interconnection, and ERCOT.
The frequency fluctuations could happen in Washington
and impact California a couple seconds later.
- And if you look at history,
we do actually see it play out once every so often.
The question is with climate change, you know,
could that be more frequently?
- [Maiya] And it's not just heat
that's getting worse because of climate change.
Hurricanes, floods, wind, ice, snow,
and extreme cold could cause the next major blackout,
but many experts believe extreme heat
will be the most deadly because even without a blackout,
we could see a spike in deaths when temperatures rise
above normal.
- Remember that in Phoenix,
we have currently on the order
of about 150 deaths per year
directly attributable to heat events
and that's with functioning infrastructure.
If we were to experience a prolonged large-scale blackout
in the US,
it's not inconceivable to expect hundreds,
if not thousands of deaths
with probably 10 times more hospitalizations occurring.
- [Maiya] Numbers like that would put this kind
of event among the most deadly weather disasters
in US history.
But as Mike reminds us, we do have options.
- The first is do nothing.
So we call that rebound and, you know, believe it or not,
we do often take that approach.
The second is robustness.
You know, robustness is armoring,
strengthening, and hardening.
There's a couple other approaches
that sort of pick up when you exceed
what infrastructure was designed for.
- Clearly, we can't talk about temperature extremes
without talking about climate change.
The more we do to decrease carbon pollution,
the less frequent and dangerous extreme temperatures will be
in the future.
And according to both Kyri and Mike,
rethinking our electrical grid
could also facilitate low carbon energy,
but there is some disagreement about just how to do that.
- Yeah, there's a couple divisive topics
in energy right now.
One of them is
the transmission versus distribution argument.
So there are some people who believe
that we should just build out transmission,
build out the large-scale grids.
Other people believe we should just spend a lot of money
on distributed energy resources like home batteries,
bi-directional EVs, rooftop solar.
It makes sense to me that it needs to be a combination
of those two.
So we need to have the redundancy of transmission,
but we also need to be locally self-sufficient
if something happens to the broader system.
- [Maiya] So let's take what we've learned and look ahead.
Here's one potential vision for the future of the grid.
First, imagine more transmission lines
connecting areas with high potential
for wind and solar generation to areas that need power.
This creates redundancy in case one
or more transmission lines fail
and removes a major barrier to greening the grid.
Next, imagine a smart grid
with distributed electrical generation.
Electric utilities will be able to see in real time
how and where electricity is being used
and offer incentives for shifting electricity use
to off peak hours.
Solar panels on a large number of rooftops
would put generation closer to demand,
decreasing the strain on transmission lines and substations,
while also decreasing the loss of power
over long transmission distances.
Then imagine more and more adoption of electric vehicles
and bidirection charging stations
that would allow you to charge your vehicle
during off-peak hours.
You would also be able to use your vehicle's battery
to power your home if there is an extreme strain
on the grid or an outage.
What's the most extreme power outage you've been in?
We'd love to hear about it in the comments below.
Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.
Before you go, we want to invite you to participate
in PBS Digital Studio's annual audience survey.
Your feedback really helps us understand
what our audience is interested in
so we can give you more of it.
You even get to vote on potential new shows.
There's a link in the description below.
If you have a few minutes, we'd love your input.
(mellow music)