Latest / Clean Power Hour / Every Blackout in America Traces Back to This One Problem #332

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Every Blackout in America Traces Back to This One Problem #332 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Sam Gomberg: Is we spend more money replacing aging equipment than we do anywhere else, right?
• 0:56
  Sam Gomberg: And are we asking the question that, as we're replacing that equipment that's you know reached its useful life or has been damaged, or what have you, are we replacing it with more robust, more resilient equipment, and are those investments sort of responsive to some sort of understanding of the need for that equipment to actually operate successfully over the next 50 years in whatever environment it's going to face?
• 1:23
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our host Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization.
• 1:33
  intro: We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition.
• 1:50
  Tim Montague: Last week, Storm Fern knocked out power for nearly a million Americans, and that wasn't a fluke. It's the new normal. Today's guests just released a report showing that every single one of the worst outages of the last decade was caused by extreme weather today the authors of the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the report is power after the storm are joining me. I'm so pleased to have Sam Gomberg and Rachel licker here today.
• 2:22
  Rachel Licker: Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me
• 2:26
  Tim Montague: so it it is amazing how the statistics about outages have changed over the decades. The one that sticks in my mind is that billion dollar events used to be like once in every 90 days, and now a billion dollar event is happening every 19 days, I think. But paint us a picture, if you would, what you learned by doing this report?
• 2:55
  Rachel Licker: Yeah, I'm happy to jump in. Well, in this report, we were really interested in understanding the implications of extreme weather on power outages in the central part of the United States, so we used really fine resolution power outage data. And what we found was, as you said, every single one of the most consequential, consequential power outages was caused by extreme weather events. And you know, we know obviously that extreme weather causes power outages, but we know that there are other things that do so as well. So it was really remarkable to us to find out that every single one of the top 100 most consequential power outage days for the central part of the US was caused by things like hurricanes, severe thunderstorms and severe winter weather like what's unfolding right now across the United States.
• 3:52
  Tim Montague: So I guess I'd love to hear what you both think we as energy professionals and prosumers should really be thinking about as the solution.
• 4:05
  Tim Montague: In my mind, it's climate restoration, which is getting back to 300 parts per million so that we don't have all this crazy, weird weather. But what do you what is the what is the takeaway for listeners? What is the action that we need to take as concerned citizens?
• 4:27
  Sam Gomberg: Well, I can jump in here. You know, there's a host of actions. I think, unfortunately, we do recognize, have to recognize, that the world we're living in right now is a climate changing world, right we are impacting the climate, and as the data shows, the frequency and severity of extreme weather events are increasing. And you know, for me, as a sort of a system planner guy, I work in the miso spaces, I do a lot of work on sort of planning out the electric system. For me, it was sort of like, well, okay, how do we integrate this knowledge into the planning that we're doing for the system? Right now we are building transmission lines, we are building power plants, etc, that we expect to last for 50 years or more, right? But I don't see in the spaces that I work at, or very infrequently in the spaces that I work in. Are we asking ourselves, what kind of climate are those assets going to have to endure to keep the lights on 50 years from now.
• 5:35
  Sam Gomberg: You know, there is a disconnect between the planning that goes on to figure out how we invest in the system and the climate science that is telling us what the conditions are going to look like 2030 years into the future.
• 5:46
  Sam Gomberg: So. And so I think this report is really starting to hopefully get get the light bulb to go off on. What do we need to do to understand what that future climate is going to look like, and make investments in the system that, first and foremost, help keep the lights on and save lives, but also that ensures that the investments we're making are going to be cost effective. Will they still last 50 years in a changing climate?
• 6:15
  Sam Gomberg: Will they operate as we expect them to, under some of these new extreme weather normals, unfortunately, and then hopefully, it also raises the alarm bells that we need to continue to decarbonize as quickly as we possibly can? I think the science is quite clear that the more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the worse these types of events and these types of extreme weather trends are going to get.
• 6:43
  Tim Montague: Yeah, to level set, we energy professionals also have to recognize that, yeah, we're contributing to Greening the Grid and net zero in the economy eventually.
• 6:53
  Tim Montague: Eventually, a recent report from Stanford University thinks we're on track to do that by 2148 not 2050 even China's on track to do it by 2050 but let's just say we were, in the optimistic case, able to do it by 2050 right?
• 7:10
  Tim Montague: We're still at 450 and that's a world that's worse than today's world. So we have to deal with a worsening climate, really, in the best of cases. And so I'm very curious, what is that infrastructure that we need to build. I think it's community scale micro grids. You know, with large scale solar, this is a small solar facility behind me, a two megawatt AC facility that partially powers a community college. But there's no resiliency built into this, right? When the grid goes down, that solar rate does absolutely nothing for that community college, unfortunately, because it is not a micro grid. We need micro grids that power 10s of 1000s of homes and communities, right? And we have the technology. We have the wind, the solar, the batteries, the switch gear. It's totally available. We're choosing to to continue our tradition of building other stuff, and the utilities have, unfortunately, a lot of power in deciding what gets built. So what does society need to reprioritize when it comes to grid infrastructure?
• 8:34
  Sam Gomberg: Well, first, I might ask my colleague, Rachel, you know what I think the first answer to that, first part of answering that question is saying, like I said, you know, what are we looking at in terms of extreme weather risks? You know, as the climate warms and different carbon trajectories.
• 8:51
  Sam Gomberg: And Rachel, I might ask you a little bit to set light on that.
• 8:56
  Rachel Licker: Yeah, that's actually, that's funny. That's what I was thinking about as well. And just sort of imagining into the future across the central part of the United States where the study focused.
• 9:03
  Rachel Licker: And I think it's important to think about it from two perspectives, and I think that's both the demand perspective and also the impacts on the infrastructure perspective, if you think about it from the demand perspective in the Chicago area, for example, historically, there have been about three days on average each year with a feels like temperature or heat index above 100 degrees Fahrenheit by mid century. So it's 2026 now. It's not all too soon, far away from now, that number is projected to grow as a result of human caused climate change, to 26 days per year on average. And by late century, if we don't take action on climate change and ramp down heat trapping emissions, that can grow to up to 50 days per year on average. But if we take these kinds of decarbonization methods and pathways and ramp down global warming emissions, we could limit that number to 17. And so what that means, obviously, is, depending on the action we take, we could face very, very different demand scenarios. I mean, 100 degrees Fahrenheit days. That's extremely high. Of course, people are going to need to be cranking up their air conditioning to stay to stay safe. So that's kind of one perspective. But then if you think about the impacts perspective, you know, what we found in our study is that the central part of the United States, many parts of it, are facing pretty significant increases in severe thunderstorm activity. You know, if you think about just one of those days can knock out power for hundreds of 1000s of residents across the region and some of the parts of the country, could see on the upwards of four or five plus, sorts of, excuse me, four or five. Five plus Severe Thunderstorm days per year. As you know, the century marches forward, and so, you know, those are pretty significant numbers when you consider the impacts, and that's just one bucket of extreme events. There's also an likelihood of more extreme rainfall coming from those hurricanes that make landfall, we also are could potentially see more kinds of heavy snowstorms in the end, severe winter weather in the places where it still occurs. And so when you kind of add that all up together, and consider the possibility also that these kinds of events could co occur sometimes, or occur in short succession. You know, it spells trouble for the region in terms of what the grid is going to be up against. Yeah.
• 11:39
  Sam Gomberg: And so getting to your question, Tim, it's like, it's that type of information that we're really hoping to integrate into the exact questions you just asked. What do we need to build? You know, all, kinds of power sources, whether clean or emitting, are impacted by weather, right? They lose efficiency when it's hot out. They struggle when they don't. You know when, if you need cooling water and you don't have cooling water, etc, etc. So when you think about what's the type of infrastructure we need, I think you're absolutely right.
• 12:11
  Sam Gomberg: Micro grids are certainly a big part of the solution, but so is a more integrated regional transmission system that can pull power from areas that are less impacted by whatever weather that we're having. So is hardening of distribution systems probably targeted, because it can be costly, but hardening of distribution systems in certain areas to make sure we have power supply to critical infrastructure for long periods of time. And it is very much micro grids to make sure we're protecting people at the community level and providing some ability to get power online. What is probably, you know, more or either keep power online or get power online more quickly in those types of events that can cause severe damage to like the larger bulk system, and you know that is going to require communication and collaborate, collaboration between communities, utilities, states and regional transmission operators or organizations, you know, like miso, because We have to make sure, you know, affordability is so front and center right now, right and so we have to make sure that the investments that are made at the community level are complementary to the investments that are being made at the bulk transmission system level and sort of everything in between.
• 13:26
  Sam Gomberg: It sounds very complex, but what our what our report, is really trying to do is at least get that conversation started, get people wanting to be in the room to talk about this and asking some of these harder questions about what are the impacts we're facing in our region, and what is the right infrastructure investments to basically mitigate that risk and hopefully do it cost effectively?
• 13:50
  Tim Montague: Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the human and economic consequences.
• 13:53
  Tim Montague: Storm Fern was not extreme.
• 13:57
  Tim Montague: Unfortunately, it was typical.
• 13:57
  Tim Montague: It is the new norm and but it has real consequences for humans and our economy. It's a both end. So when the grid fails, and I, you know, it's, it's okay that we have made some mistakes by not evolving the grid fast enough. It is what it is. We have to look forward. We have to solve the problem. I'm not, I'm not here to point fingers at anyone, really, I'm here to say we're smart, we have technology.
• 14:37
  Tim Montague: We should change our ways and disrupt the system if necessary.
• 14:41
  Tim Montague: If that's what it means. I mean, it's, it's very concerning to me that you point out that only three states are prioritizing resiliency, you know, in their planning, Michigan, Louisiana and Texas, and I'm like, This is insanity, because it's a big country, and we have this thing called the federal government and FERC, and why can't we do like, a reevaluation and reinvention of our grid system and priorities and the way we make decisions about it. It seems like we're stuck in the 20th century, and it's so ironic, because we created the grid to give us the good life that we have. It's amazing, right? It truly is amazing that we have 24/7 electricity most of the time in most places, and HVAC on demand, right? We have an amazing life compared to 100 years ago or 200 years ago, much less. But what are the consequences of these events like fern? Yeah.
• 15:51
  Rachel Licker: Um, I can take a first stab. And then Sam, if you want to follow up. Well, we know that these extreme events are really consequential from a range of perspectives. And one really important kind of takeaway message is they don't fall evenly across communities.
• 16:05
  Rachel Licker: There are certainly communities that tend to bear the brunt of the impacts. You know, they're not necessarily prioritized in terms of power restoration efforts, and those tend to be communities that are historically marginalized. And so that's one really important point to consider. And maybe Sam can talk a little bit more about, sort of the metrics and sort of understanding that and why that is the way that is. But then from other perspectives, you know, like I said before, often these events are co occurring, or occurring in short succession of one another. And so if you look at one example that we talk about in our report, is the 2020, Atlantic hurricane season. It was really remarkable. It was a very, very active season. Just in the state of Louisiana, there were three of the top most consequential power outage events over the last decade. Were three hurricanes, Delta, Laura and zeta, that occurred within a few months of each other, and they hit the same communities. And, you know, these communities were still reeling from the previous ones. And so it's just this one two punch sort of situation, you know, and if you have more extreme weather events occurring because of human caused climate change, you're more likely to have that kind of situation moving forward. So that's a really important thing to consider, then, in terms of consequences, I mean, something that we also found in our report was that the mortality from these kinds of extreme events are actually often much higher than reported by official sources. We saw that, you know, there are direct deaths associated with them in terms of floods and storms, for example.
• 17:57
  Rachel Licker: But then there were a lot of indirect deaths caused by, for example, carbon monoxide poisoning, often in the severe winter storms, where people might be using the generators or, you know, warming sources inside that causes air poisoning. And then, as I mentioned, you know, these, these kinds of events don't fall evenly across communities. And so, you know, there are a lot of situations, for example, in which there were damages to low income communities or mobile home communities individuals with disabilities, elderly, you know where it's not just a matter of losses of income or losses of resources because they didn't have the power on and lost food in the refrigerator, but sometimes it's a matter of life or death. You know where, when the oxygen equipment can't operate, for example. So, you know, it's a pretty wide ranging set of effects from these kinds of events.
• 19:00
  Tim Montague: Yeah, this, this expression disadvantaged communities. Let's, let's put a face to this. What comes to mind for me is low income and people of color and but more. I mean, the the really big factor here is low income. I think there's plenty of poor white people in America too. But when you think about a power outage, an extended power outage, let's say for more than 48 hours, I, as a middle class American, have the option to DeCamp and go to some other place, you know, and whether that's by car or plane or train or whatever, right? And go to some place where there is power and rent a hotel room or stay with a relative. But many low income people don't have that privilege. It's expensive to travel and then stay in a hotel, right? This is, this is hundreds or 1000s of dollars, depending on how long the the outage lasts. So tell us a little more about how you guys see the the face of the impacted people.
• 20:08
  Sam Gomberg: I think you make a very good point. Another thing that really brings it home for me is thinking about hourly wage workers. So I'm thinking about folks in communities right now that are still snowed in or still, you know, recovering from winter storm Fern, who may have gone days without being able to go and go to work and earn a living. Yeah, right, you know, and so you know that can be really devastating for people who are living on the margins, paycheck to paycheck, and now it's very likely they're going to get hit with a very high electric bill, because during these winter storms, natural gas prices spike. A lot of the states that are impacted, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, are very. Heavily reliant on natural gas for electricity. And you know, when those gas prices spike, the electricity prices spike, and those costs are passed straight through rate payers. So even when they do get the power on, there can be a financial burden to turning on the lights and getting the house warm again. So So I think one of the main things that really comes out is, for a long time, I think the electric industry was really focused on, are the lights on or are they off? They have this standard of one day in 10 you know, we try to build a system where the light, where we have a power outage once every 10 years, but there's no until just recently, have we not gotten serious about thinking about how much it matters, how long the lights are out, and only really, since winter storm Yuri, which is a seminal moment, moment for I think a lot of us in the industry, have we started to look at things like, you know, not just did, did the did the power Go out? But how long did it go out? How quickly can we restore power to these communities? Because duration really matters, particularly when you're talking about events that cause life threatening conditions like winter storms.
• 23:00
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over 10 gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand, and is America's number one choice for solar plants now offering solutions for commercial utility ESS and balance of system requirements go to Chintpowersystems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more. It seems to me, there's, there's like a cascading impact of these outages, right? There's the direct impact and the potential life threatening hazards that the let's just say it's an ice storm brings right?
• 24:05
  Tim Montague: You lose power, so you don't have heating and electricity, or heating and lighting potentially. I mean, it's great to have a gas furnace, right, but there's a blower there that moves the air around, right? And so when the power's out, you don't have your gas furnace working really, either, right now. And then there's this, you know? I mean, I don't, I don't know how you think about this.
• 24:33
  Tim Montague: And maybe, maybe that's something that would be good to just get on the table, because power lines can go down, power plants can go down. There's other, you know, substations can go down. What are the things that we need to harden, I guess, in order to really be more resilient and resistant to these storms? Because as far as I can tell, the storms are going to keep coming for the foreseeable future, like we have to up our game and build more hardened, better infrastructure as a first line of defense.
• 25:15
  Sam Gomberg: No, yes, I think that's right. Those are the types of questions that we're really trying to elevate with this report. We don't have all the answers, and I think it's very clear that the costs and effort to build a system that is 100% resilient to every risk is probably outside the bounds of the appetite for what we're willing to pay right? And so we have to ask a lot of hard questions to understand, where is that spot where we can target we can harden certain infrastructure that's going to give us a good bang for our buck in terms of either being able to keep the lights on or get the lights on quickly after an event, where do we need to invest To make sure that the most vulnerable are protected, and where do we need to invest to do this in a way that also accelerates decarbonization?
• 26:08
  Sam Gomberg: Right? And so there's it really is a really complex formula that right now we're just not seeing these questions being asked in all the right venues. We're not seeing the collaboration between all the various parties, the communities, the utilities, the states, the misos of the world, etc, because you got to be able to say, we can't harden the system against everything. So what are the risks we really need to address, and where are the investments we can make to start mitigating that risk? And bring that risk level down, even if we recognize we can't get it to zero, and even if we recognize that there is uncertainty about what the future will hold, these impacts will be dependent on how much more carbon we continue to emit into the atmosphere. How society evolves over time. What do we do with data centers, who are putting an enormous amount of pressure to also build, build, build, and how do we integrate that in so we don't, we don't come to this conversation saying that we have all these answers.
• 27:11
  Sam Gomberg: I think we're come to this conversation saying we need to do better about understanding the risk. We need to develop metrics that help us evaluate different investments in terms of meeting that, mitigating that risk, and what is an acceptable cost. We need to improve our communication so that everybody's bought into this effort, so that when we say, hey, we need to spend this chunk of money to harden this transmission line or to build this micro grid, that people are bought into the benefits that they're going to get from that and understand why this is a good investment, and we're really, just like I said, we're not coming with all the answers, but we're saying these are questions that we all need to start digging into, because climate change is moving ahead, unfortunately, whether we're standing still or not, so we shouldn't be standing still.
• 27:59
  Tim Montague: I mean, I really, I really think that the clean coalition's work. This is Craig Lewis. I don't know if you are familiar at all with his work, but he's all about helping communities, develop community scale, micro grids. He's developed a paradigm called V, O, R, value of resilience, and it's just a simple hierarchy.
• 28:17
  Tim Montague: You know, if this is a facility or a campus that contributes to life saving like a hospital or a fire station, right? That's the top priority. And you say That's worth three times the the average value of having power.
• 28:38
  Tim Montague: And then the next level is like community centers that are providing resources for a larger group of people. This would be schools and and, you know, places where people can gather for extra warming or cooling and food distribution, or, you know, sleeping on cots, if, if there's a bigger problem, like a hurricane or a tornado, and then everything else, so to speak.
• 29:06
  Tim Montague: But is somebody, is somebody, like, really working on, you know, integrating this into the great, into the bigger picture.
• 29:15
  Tim Montague: Because I just see, I just see the ISOs, you know, kind of doing, dancing around the edges, but not really substantively upping the game. And so I guess I'm curious how you see what is the opportunity that we're faced with? Because if Firm storm scale events are now expected, what should be built differently, like we have to ask that question.
• 29:43
  Sam Gomberg: Think you're absolutely right. We do have to ask that question. I think your characterization of the ISOs dancing around the edges is accurate. There are barriers that we need to break down in terms of lines of communication.
• 30:00
  Sam Gomberg: I think you see ISO saying, well, the customer is not really, you know, the rate payer is not our jurisdiction. That's the utilities jurisdiction. The utilities are our customers. I think that creates an artificial barrier to an ISO really thinking about the communities that it's there to serve. So that's just one example of sort of communication lines that need to be broken down. I think, you know, solutions like, like we've talked about, happen at every level, and issues happen at every level too, of course. But solutions happen at every level.
• 30:36
  Sam Gomberg: They need to be complimentary, you know. So this question of, what do we need to be building?
• 30:39
  Sam Gomberg: You know, from my perspective, we need to be building a more regionally and inter regionally integrated grid, so that we can be pulling power from further away, and so that when power plants are struggling, we have a bigger pool of resources to pull from. At the same time as we need to be building community specific resilience, because each community is different, has its different vulnerabilities, has its different populations that it needs to protect. So we really need to be building at both ends, and of course, you know, in the middle.
• 31:12
  Rachel Licker: One thing I just wanted to add is, I think it's also really important, and it's sort of maybe like the water we're swimming in, or some other sort of metaphor that we can talk about is the information that we have at our fingertips right now with respect to climate science and extreme weather. You know, we have in the United States some of the most sophisticated resources available through our National Weather Service and our government agencies in terms of modeling and prediction, but unfortunately, we are in the.
• 31:42
  Rachel Licker: Situation where we're seeing divestments in those kinds of offices and infrastructure, with a lot of resources being taken offline, and staff being, you know, losing their jobs, and that has real consequences in our ability to see what's coming down the pike, both in terms of the short term and the long term. And so I think, you know, a really other important piece of this puzzle is the information that can inform those kinds of risk assessments.
• 32:08
  Rachel Licker: And so I think it is important to keep that in mind for the power sector actors to be cognizant of that shifting landscape potentially and and also to kind of have a little skin in that game too, because it is really in their best interest, in terms of having the most sophisticated risk assessments possible,
• 32:31
  Sam Gomberg: and in terms of who was working on this, you know, I do want to uplift the Electric Power Research Institute.
• 32:39
  Sam Gomberg: They've been really, for the last three years, really trying to develop ways for utilities and other infrastructure stakeholders to understand the different types of risks coming from climate change, understand how different types of infrastructure are going to respond so how the materials are going to respond to being exposed to, You know, months instead of days of 100 degree temperatures, how they're how they respond to higher winds, and being able to say, Okay, now we have a better assessment of how our infrastructure responds to a changing climate, and that can inform how we invest in new infrastructure. So I want to uplift that as one tool that is out there and is really sort of out on the cutting edge, you speak of valuing resilience, and I think that's another area of work where we're seeing some really great minds and organizations dig into how do we value the increased resilience of better investments so that we can plug this into sort of our cost benefit analysis, and be able to articulate to our communities why this investment delivers benefits, even as we have to spend money. So there is good work coming out, but it is slow and we're way behind. I mean, a lot of this work really didn't get off the ground until after winter storm Yuri, I think for the first year or so after winter storm Yuri, I was engaged in more conversations about how we define the word resilience, then conversations about, what do we actually do to protect the system, right? And so it gives you a some sense of how slow this can move and we need to move faster. I think that that comes. I think the ISOs, like miso, have a huge role here, because they have an enormous convening power, right? They can, they can get the states, all their states in the same room. They can get all their utilities in the same room. They have enormous technical capabilities to do the modeling and look at the system much more broadly. So I think they have a very critical role here to play in these discussions.
• 34:49
  Tim Montague: I mean, what is, what is just common sense about clean coalition's work is they say, Okay, today, the utilities want to build transmission and distribution. Tomorrow, they can build solar, wind, batteries, and switch gear and provide resilience. They want to build infrastructure because they have a cost plus model. We want to give them that, but build infrastructure and and mandate that they build infrastructure that incorporates resilience into the grid. We have the technology the same old grid is clearly not going to work. It's too brittle, and it's no fault of those engineers that designed that system right of sticks and wires like it's amazing when you drive across America, just how monotonous that system is and how unresilient it is. And yes, the natural disasters are.
• 35:48
  Tim Montague: There's a lot of hot spots, so to speak, right the Gulf Coast California, but truly nowhere is free of the potential for very serious outages. And I just think that we have to get into and not in decades, but in months. We have to get into a new mode of we need community scale resilience and micro grids are the way. Can you give me an argument like, why we shouldn't do that, and why aren't we doing that?
• 36:25
  Sam Gomberg: Mr. Specific to micro grids,
• 36:27
  Tim Montague: yeah, community scale micro grids, like we need to, we need to, we clearly, we just so clearly, need resiliency at scale. I don't know of a better way to do that than with, with, you know, do. G powered micro grids. I mean, today, the federal government seems to think that the future is smnrs, Small Modular nuclear reactors.
• 36:50
  Tim Montague: And that's all well and good. I have nothing against that technology, fundamentally, but it takes a decade to build a nuclear power plant, at least.
• 37:00
  Tim Montague: So how is that going to be? The answer, right? It's not, it's not going to change what's going on with these storms and these outages.
• 37:08
  Sam Gomberg: Well, I think you make a good point with community scale micro grids. I don't want to put sort of community scale micro grids, and you know, this into sort of one homogenous bucket, right? Those local solutions are also going to vary from community to community, and I think those are conversations that need to happen at the community level. What are our needs? What are the resources we can tap into, and how do we potentially do this in a way that's cost effective, right? I still think there is certainly a role for the larger distribution and bulk systems to make sure that the investments they're making are complementary. I think that a point you make about the current infrastructure is very important, because I think what a lot of people may not realize, you know, we're talking a lot about connecting new loads. We're talking a lot about building, you know, large trans, you know, bulk transmission lines to move power around and so forth. But certainly over the last decade, and I would even say, probably on a year to year basis, we spend more money replacing aging equipment than we do anywhere else, right? And are we asking the question that, as we're replacing that equipment that's you know reaches useful life or has been damaged or what have you, are we replacing it with more robust, more resilient equipment, and are those investments sort of responsive to some sort of understanding of the need for that equipment to actually operate successfully over the next 50 years in whatever environment it's going to face? So I think that's a big part of it.
• 38:42
  Tim Montague: Well, let's, let's close with a lightning round.
• 38:45
  Tim Montague: No, no pun intended, okay, and just, just give me a short answer, and you can, you can, you can pick and choose as you see fit. So what's one miss?
• 38:52
  Tim Montague: What is a most misunderstood myth about grid resilience?
• 39:04
  Sam Gomberg: I would say the most misunderstood myth is that it's a responsibility of any one party. I think we there is a huge responsibility by utilities. There's a huge responsibility for states to step in here and provide proper oversight and regulation.
• 39:22
  Sam Gomberg: There's a huge responsibility for communities, I think, to elevate their voice and make sure that their vulnerable populations and their vulnerable infrastructure is is accounted for and whatever investments we're making going forward. And so that would be, would be my response,
• 39:43
  Tim Montague: and what is one investment we keep delaying that will cost us the most?
• 39:49
  Sam Gomberg: I would say targeted, honestly, targeted community scale, microwaves, because that is how you are going to protect those people that are most vulnerable. And when you say, What will cost us the most, I think of lives lost.
• 40:03
  Sam Gomberg: And how do we if there's any one metric that we apply to how we respond here, maybe that should be, nobody dies. And so I think those those solutions probably happen most effectively at the community.
• 40:18
  Tim Montague: And finally, what should decision makers do before the next storm?
• 40:22
  Sam Gomberg: Fern, start talking to people. Decision makers need to hear from their communities.
• 40:29
  Sam Gomberg: What are your priorities? Where are you vulnerable? So that we know where we need to invest quickly, because these types of events are going to come again, and they're probably going to come pretty soon.
• 40:42
  Tim Montague: You've been very quiet. Rachel, what do you have a final takeaway for us about your report and what needs to change to stop the bleeding?
• 40:54
  Rachel Licker: Yeah, thanks. I was thinking a lot and listening to Sam and his responses to your questions really, really interesting. And, you know, just reflecting on the last point about the need for decision makers to talk to the people that they're representing. And you know, their lives are implicated in these kinds of decisions. And you know, expanding upon that just we need as much information being embedded into these kinds of decisions as possible, and so from the scientific perspective, there's an abundance of evidence at our fingertips and making sure that that's being used in decision making, so that you know, we're not making uninformed decisions about what's going to happen in the future. But we actually have so much right here. We. Have so many people who can help get that information into the right venues, the right places, so that we can make the best decisions possible for people, so that there are no lives lost when these extreme events do increasingly happen.
• 41:59
  Tim Montague: Storm Fern isn't a warning, it's confirmation. Grid resilience is no longer optional. It's no longer theoretical. If you're developing or financing energy assets, this report is required reading. I'm Tim Montague, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Tell a friend about the show. That's the best thing you can do to help others find this content, and I hope to see you at a trade show in 2026 My goal is to meet 100 listeners, so check out our events page, and I'll see you there. Hey guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial but wanting to scale into large CNI solar? I'm Tim Montague. I've developed over 150 megawatts of commercial solar, and I've solved the problem that you're having you don't know what tools and technologies you need in order to successfully close 100 KW to megawatt scale projects.
• 42:54
  Tim Montague: I've developed a commercial solar accelerator to help installers exactly like you.
• 43:01
  Tim Montague: Just go to cleanpowerhour.com click on strategy and book a call today. It's totally free with no obligation. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate you listening to the pod, and I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Go to clean power hour and click strategy today. Thanks so much.
• 43:22
  Tim Montague: Thank you so much to Sam and Rachel for coming on the show today. I really appreciate the UCs, the Union of Concerned Scientists. And how can our listeners find you?
• 43:34
  Sam Gomberg: Well, can always go to ucs.org you can find all of our content, including the power after the storm reports. That's where you can find us.
• 43:44
  Rachel Licker: Thanks for having us.
• 43:47
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage.