California has strengthened its electrical grid significantly in recent years: no rolling blackouts or grid emergencies during heatwaves because of solar energy and battery storage (“now equivalent to 5 very large nuclear power plants”).
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Discussion 2 comments
While there have been rolling blackouts, it was not a good time to be a PGE customer during the previous winter's rain storms. Over the period of a month, we were out of power for roughly 10 days total, one of them a 4-5 day stretch after taking two days to send someone out to notice a giant redwood tree had taken out two power boxes. So while they have drastically improved on the rolling blackout part, the infrastructure is what they need to fix next. Too many power boxes starting fires and power poles being knocked out by falling trees. Granted, climate change is making that a challenge, but still. I really wish in some areas they moved the power lines underground.
Yeah, my parents live in Nor Cal and they still have a lot of power outages. I think in their area they're still cutting the power for wind storms because the lines are so bad they don't want them to spark more fires. So there's still a long way to go.
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