"I'll never forget driving that day and the whole state was just black," says Andrew Powers, who works on solar and energy storage for PSE&G, an electric utility in New Jersey. Water infrastructure, like the treatment plants for drinking water and wastewater, needs electricity to operate - a lesson that became clear almost a decade ago when Superstorm Sandy hit New York and New Jersey. In the wake of the damage, millions of Texans spent more than a week without drinkable water. "People were going: 'once in a century storm.' Here we are ten years later with an even more extreme storm." "I remember being in Texas in 2011 and having a four-hour blackout in the middle of that cold storm," Lott says. Still, it wasn't the first time Lott had experienced something like that. "And instead of 40 minutes, it was almost four days before we got our power back and we lost our water as well." "We thought we were setting up for 40-minute rolling blackouts, which is what they were telling us online to expect," Lott says. She's research director at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy but has lived in Texas with family during the pandemic. The extent of the blackouts in Texas took many people off-guard, even energy experts living there, like Melissa Lott. So we just can't bury our heads in the sand and ignore that this is a thing that's happening, because it will just continue to disrupt our lives." "We're seeing them, especially in hurricanes, happening more frequently with greater intensity. "These natural disasters and disruptive events are going to continue," says Eliza Hotchkiss, senior resilience analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. While electric utilities traditionally invest in keeping up the electric grid, disaster experts say they need to also explore newer solutions, adapted to extreme weather, for when the grid falters and can't be repaired fast. Smaller battery systems also aid people who rely on life-saving medical equipment at home. Some are being sited at crucial facilities, like water treatment plants, hospitals and emergency response centers. They're installing solar panels and large batteries to create tiny "microgrids" that continue working when the larger grid goes dark. So, some communities are looking for new ways to ensure that vulnerable people and infrastructure can withstand power outages. Climate change-driven disasters, like more intense storms and hurricanes, only increase that risk. That, combined with low water pressure from broken pipes, meant residents had to boil their water.īlackouts are becoming increasingly common as extreme weather causes electricity demand to skyrocket, while simultaneously damaging the aging electric grid. In Austin, the Ullrich Water Treatment Plant shut down due to an electrical failure. Like falling dominos, infrastructure around Texas, dependent on electricity, began failing in the extreme cold. The water coming out their faucets was no longer safe to drink. People wait in line for Fiesta Mart to open after the store lost electricity in Austin, Texas on February 17, 2021.Īs the blackouts in Texas dragged on, millions of residents quickly realized they had more to worry about than trying to light and heat their homes.
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