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James B. Meigs joins Seth Barron to discuss last month’s power blackout in Manhattan, California’s self-inflicted energy crisis, and potential energy sources for the future.
“As power outages go,” Meigs writes, “the Broadway Blackout of 2019 was pretty modest.” But energy reliability is becoming an issue in states across the country. California’s largest power supplier, Meigs reports, recently announced that it will begin shutting down parts of the grid to help reduce the risk of wildfires.
Energy problems could get worse as states adopt strict mandates and replace today’s power sources with unreliable green alternatives. The Broadway blackout and California’s fire-prevention strategy illustrate the same reality: the nation’s energy infrastructure is outdated, and upgrading it will require a huge investment.
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Thanks for this interview. I so agree that people are living in areas where they did not live before because they found out about the regular storms coming through or made do (ie building easily rebuilt structures, etc). I think of so many people moving to the coast and Florida in the last decades. Now I will add the people in California moving to fringe areas because of the high cost of living elsewhere in the state. Great information on this important topic.
I have been getting messages from my utility this week to lessen consumption. My state’s grid is at capacity probably because of demand (hot!) though we do have a ton of wind power capacity. Ultimately, my city utility wants to be at least 75% renewable (wind/solar). Ugh!
The machinations on the main power line to deliver that renewable energy to customers was interesting in unto itself about a decade ago. The Blue areas of Red-state Texas were fine with the windmills and solar farms being placed in rural Red areas of the state, but the ones around Austin and San Antonio filed lawsuits to keep the 765kv power line from being completed through their areas.
So as with many liberal Californians or New Yorkers, they drew the line at renewable energy when the infrastructure required started impacting their lives in what they saw as a negative way. NIMBYism trumped environmentalism, until the state won their lawsuit and the $1.5b line was allowed to be completed (drive any section of I-10 from the Permian Basin to north of San Antonio and you can see it — the area that was subject of the suit was where it headed off east towards Austin).