Mangled power lines are shown in the aftermath of violent storms in Cypress, Texas, near Houston, on Friday, May 17, 2024.
CNN —
Picture this: It’s a Thursday night in Houston and thunderstorms are rolling in. Suddenly, winds roar past 100 mph. Trees snap, windows shatter and the city darkens as power flickers out.
Even after it’s over, it takes days for the lights to come back on in parts of the city.
A week and a half later, the Tuesday morning commute is just getting underway in Dallas. Thunderstorms rush through the city, unleashing hurricane-strength wind gusts and torrential rain. Trees and power lines topple to the ground, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of people. Many homes and businesses remain without power days later.
That’s exactly the scenario that played out in Texas over the past few weeks, and these kinds of outages are happening more frequently as destructive extreme weather thrashes the aging electric grid.
From 2000 to 2023, 80% of all major US power outages were due to weather, according to analysis by Climate Central, a non-profit research group. The number of weather-related outages from 2014 to 2023 doubled compared to outages at the start of the century.
Being without power is not only expensive – keeping people out of work and school, and keeping businesses closed – it’s dangerous. There doesn’t need to be a heat wave in Texas for summertime temperatures to soar to unhealthy levels. Heat is particularly dangerous without A/C at night, which is when the body needs to cool itself after a hot day.
Experts say there could be ways to keep the lights on in the face of extreme conditions, even if there’s no single perfect solution.
Why can’t the lights stay on?
Power generation, transmission and distribution within the US happens on a power grid, an interconnected series of power plants, power lines and electrical substations. But the grid’s infrastructure is aging fast and struggling to keep up with modern power demands, according to the US Department of Energy.
It’s also struggling as extreme weather gets more intense as the planet warms.
“Our (power) infrastructure was built for the weather of the past,” Michael Webber, a professor of engineering at the University of Texas said. “It wasn’t built for the weather of the future, and the weather of the future is already here.”
A majority of the US electric grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s, but some of the first parts of the system were constructed in the early 1900s. And 70% of transmission lines in the US are approaching the end of their 50- to 80-year lifecycles, according to the DOE.
Every element within the power grid is vulnerable in some way to extreme weather, Webber told CNN.
Power is largely distributed by above-ground power lines from large transmission towers to smaller – and abundant – power poles. Most outages happen because of failures with power lines and poles, making them a “big weakness” in the overall system, according to Webber.
CenterPoint Energy employees work to repair damaged lines on May 18, 2024, after violent storms caused widespread damage and power outages in Houston, Texas.
Severe weather – defined as thunderstorms, high winds, heavy rain and tornadoes – was far and away the main cause of weather-related major outages at 58%, according to Climate Central. And it directly impacts these exposed lines.
Power lines and poles can be brought down by falling tree limbs, topple over in fierce winds and be snapped by heavy ice. Extreme events, like the derecho and tornado that tore through the Houston in mid-May, can turn massive transmission towers into mangled metal.
Hurricanes, like 2021’s Ida, inflict damage at a colossal scale.
When infrastructure can’t withstand extreme weather, it not only disrupts power, it also creates its own disasters: The massive Smokehouse Creek Fire ignited earlier this year after a “decayed” power pole toppled in strong winds, according to a report from the Texas House of Representatives.
But it’s not just power lines and power poles under attack from extreme weather; the things that generate power can also take a beating.
Blasts of frigid cold can freeze necessary equipment, leaving it unable to keep up with demand. Historic cold shuttered power plants and froze non-winterized wind turbines in Texas in 2021. The resulting power outages were vast and deadly in the brutal cold.
Meanwhile, searing heat sends electricity demands skyrocketing as cooling needs surge. If power needs cannot be met, blackouts and brownouts arise. Equipment also overheats and fails if temperatures soar too high.
Modernized equipment can keep the A/C running – for a price
In order to keep power flowing during extreme weather, or restore it quickly in the aftermath, the US grid needs to be upgraded and fortified on a vast scale.
It will cost trillions of dollars to do this well, according to Webber.
Power poles, power lines and transmission equipment need to be built or rebuilt stronger and operate at a higher capacity to keep larger amounts of power flowing, even when demand spikes.
At the most basic level, a wooden power pole is less durable and has a shorter lifespan than a metal pole. Installing sturdy, metal poles means more stay upright in extreme weather, but they could come at an environmental cost, given how energy intensive it is to make steel.
Fortified power lines above ground will still sometimes be knocked over by violent storms, so another solution is to put power lines underground. Parts of the US are already doing this, including cities like Anaheim, California, and Fort Collins, Colorado.
But burying electricity isn’t perfect solution, either. Running power lines underground is often 10 times more expensive than building overhead wires, and the lines are susceptible to flooding and can be difficult for crews to service, according to Rob Gramlich, founder and president of Grid Strategies, a power grid consulting firm.
Aaron Morgan, with Pacific Gas & Electric Co., works to install underground power lines in Sonoma County, California, on Monday, June 13, 2022.
Modernization of outdated power lines costs around $100,000 per mile, while new power lines can run anywhere from $1 million to $10 million per mile depending on geography and whether they are above or underground, according to Webber.
But it’s an investment that will pay for itself when fewer power lines spark devastating wildfires or outages that cost up to billions of dollars are avoided, Webber contends.
A stronger grid also has to have smarter controls to rapidly reroute power where it’s needed when outages do occur.
“Any number of things can happen to power generation in any one area,” Gramlich told CNN. “But if you have fortified inter-regional transmission, you have an insurance policy against many risks.”
The US is designed so that if power needs in one region spike because of increased demand or power generation fails, another region steps in to help handle the load.
Renewable energy sources like solar and wind make the grid more resilient by diversifying the number of ways power is generated if another method fails. But, the energy generated by renewable means is still delivered via the same vulnerable infrastructure as all other power.
It may be an insurmountable task to eliminate weather-related power outages completely, but it should be possible to eradicate major, multi-day outages.
“Ultimately, I think it really should be extremely rare to have a multi-day power outage,” Gramlich said. “We can plan the whole electricity system so that never happens.”
