Texas power grid struggles with system-wide stresses caused by brutal heat wave

Geoff Bennett:

A record heat wave and its connections to climate change are highlighting again the growing concerns around America's electrical grid and whether it can withstand the added stress.

William Brangham focuses on that part of the story tonight.

William Brangham:

As Texas and much of the South broils right now, more people are dialing up their air conditioning to stay safe.

In fact, in Texas, which operates its own electrical grid, demand for power there hit an all-time high this week. That puts enormous stress on utilities and power lines, at the very moment that they're also being impacted by the extreme heat.

Michael Webber is a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin, author of several books on this topic, and also chief technology officer at the venture fund called Energy Impact Partners.

Michael Webber, thanks so much for being here.

Just some table-setting here. When we talk about the grid, what specific infrastructure are we talking about? Is it the utilities? Is it power plants? Is it the lines? What is it?

Michael Webber, University of Texas at Austin: It's all of that. You got to.

It's the power plants that make the electricity, the transmission lines that move the electricity from the power plants to the cities, and then the distribution lines that move it around the city, and then eventually you get to our meters and our appliances, like our air conditioner.

So it's a whole system up to the meter that really is what we call the grid.

William Brangham:

So, you are in Texas right now, which I mentioned has its own particular grid.

Almost all the climate models that we look at say we are going to see more and more intense heat waves of this kind. Are our grids nationally able to handle this ongoing stress?

Michael Webber:

It's going to be a strain.

We basically built our grid for the weather of the past. We built out the transmission system mostly from the 1930s, 1970s. A lot of our modern power plants we built in the '70s and '80s. There are some newer ones, but it was cooler then. And we need to prepare the system for a hotter future, which means, as you said, more frequent and intense heat waves.

It also means longer-lasting heat waves. The heat we're feeling now in Texas and the high temperatures and high demand for air conditioning might be the new normal. Next year might be hotter. So, we have to prepare for that, and that means making sure the power plant is reliable. It also means that the transmission lines or power lines are reliable.

It also means things like more efficient air conditioners and better-insulated homes. There are a lot of things we have to do to make the whole system robust.

William Brangham:

One of the things I was struck by in my research is how Texas is really a leader in renewable energy, and solar farms growing like crazy in Texas and saving a ton of money for rate payers there.

But I understand that there's also a lot of conservative pushback, arguing that renewables are not reliable and they're not sturdy for the future. What does the record show on that front?

Michael Webber:

That's a great point.

So we have built a lot of wind, a lot of solar, a lot of batteries. So we're at the sort of front edge of this in many ways on the cleaner technologies. We also have a lot of nuclear, coal and gas. We have got a mix of just about everything in Texas.

And the political pushback really is pushing for this idea that wind and solar are not reliable. But what we found in Winter Storm Uri, the February 2021 storm that led to the deaths of hundreds of people and a massive blackout, it was the natural gas infrastructure that froze up, and natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants that went offline.

And we're finding out that solar power plants really perform well when it's sunny outside, no surprise, and those are the same days as hot. So solar has been particularly helpful for us right now, especially since we have like eight to 10 gigawatts of thermal power plants, these traditional power plants like coal and gas, offline. Solar is really helpful.

The hottest days, it's not so windy. Wind is doing OK, but not great. So it's good to have a mix of everything. And renewables, in particular, have been stepping up in these heat waves and saving us a lot of money, while also avoiding a lot of emissions.

More importantly for Texas, the wind and solar power plants don't need water cooling. And water is scarce in Texas. So we're getting a lot of benefits from renewables, but, truthfully, we have a diverse mix, and that's really helpful.

William Brangham:

So, operators of your grid in Texas have been urging people, in the midst of this heat wave, to cut back voluntarily on their usage of electricity.

You argued in a terrific column in The New York Times that that's — you're skeptical of that idea. And you argue that we ought to pay people to dial their electrical use. Make that case.

Michael Webber:

Absolutely.

So, we can ask people, in their better angels, to voluntarily conserve, maybe dial back their air conditioner or turn off noncritical appliances. And that will work a little bit. Some people will do that.

But if we paid people, I don't know, $1 per afternoon or a couple dollars per afternoon, maybe as much as $15, people would absolutely dial back their conditioner or pre-cool their homes. So, we can use financial incentives to encourage people to reduce their demand.

And turning down the demand is the same as turning up a power plant. It helps balance the grid. There are cities like Chicago with ComEd doing that right now. They will pay you $1 per afternoon. So we know this works. We need this in a widespread way.

And turning off the demand would be a lot faster to deploy, a lot cleaner and a lot cheaper than building a bunch more power plants. That's for sure.

William Brangham:

I mean, going forward, though, we need, clearly, a much bigger investment in this infrastructure of the grid, more national, across the country.

Why is it that we have pushed off this critical investment for so many years?

Michael Webber:

For a lot of people, investment sounds like spending, and spending sounds bad.

But, in fact, it's investment for the future. We need the grid. We use it for water treatment. We use it for food preservation. We use it for air conditioning. So, electricity is really central to what a modern economy is. And if we look towards the future with growth of electric vehicles and induction stove tops and electric heat pumps, we're going to electrify many more things in the economy, especially as we decarbonize.

So we're looking at like doubling or tripling the grid. That means a lot of investment. I like this, because that means you're going to clean things up, we're going to create a lot of jobs and grow the economy, while making things more robust. So, I think this is a great opportunity. I think of it as investment, not spending.

But just people are reticent. Sounds expensive. But the benefit is, you will have a cheaper, cleaner grid. And that's really useful.

William Brangham:

And are you confident that we are going to do that in time to reap all those benefits that you're describing?

Michael Webber:

I think we will. I'm always an optimist. Engineers are often optimists, because we're problem solvers, and you have to be an optimist to believe a problem can be solved.

So I think we will do it. I think it will start to take off more quickly, based — people start to see the benefits of all the jobs that are created and all this sort of excitement around having a better system. So I think that's going to start happening. Frankly, it's already started to happen.

So, I think it's going to happen quickly and surprise us by how easy it was in the end.

William Brangham:

All right, Michael Webber at the University of Texas, thank you so much for being here.

Michael Webber:

Thank you for having me.