Our incredible and increasing need for reliable energy supply

It only takes a day or two before the romantic fun and creative survival of a power outage begins to take its toll. And after two days of not being to warm back up, clean up or clean off, or connect with others or do any real work, the boredom, loneliness and and cold turns into fears of survival and depression, reminding just how incredibly important electrical service is today. With all of our connected devices, use of the internet for so many of our daily activities, and the comfort it provides us. And yet, I was lucky unlike a neighbor who could not flush their toilets and use any water for their waste water needed power to pump it up to the sewer connection. At least I could use my toilets and wash my hands and brush my teeth.

Once power was restored after three days of temps in single digits at night and continued cloudy snow fall, I realized just how stuck I was. The garage door doesn’t open with the push of a button; the snow blower batteries cannot be recharged to keep the driveway clear in case needed; my mobile devices and computer have to shutdown and even getting into bed with thick down comforter and extra wool blankets is cold when wearing layers of thermals and even a hat and gloves to bed. What are we to do without electricity or fuel to heat our homes, water and bodies?

As I run out of clean silverware, plates and bowls, I have to get creative on their reuse without hot water to clean them. And yet all of this sounds really petty compared to those in Ukraine living in colder conditions with extended power outages and the fear of imminent death from a brutal missile attack. Or from the much deeper cold and longer power outages of those in Buffalo a mere week earlier. It makes me realize that power, heat, hot water, internet service, ability to keep our mobile devices charged, are so essential to quality life, and even, just staying alive. And yet our power grids, at least here in the US, are just not built nor prepared for the increasing more extreme weather events that are ever-more prevalent everywhere. And as we add more electrical devices, more rechargeable tools and toys, vehicles, and the need for heat or cooling, I know that our power grids are already strained and will not be able to keep up with our increasing power demands of homes and businesses. So our we will see many more power grid failures and extended ones such as the one I just went thru even though living one the same power grid circuit thru 20 years of even more extreme weather events.

So this brings me to a few realizations. We need to design and build our power grids from utility to home so that they are much more resilient and can adapt and handle every increasing electrical loads and extreme weather. And maintain the comfort and necessary living support of our current and future devices, tools and services. In order to do this, our utility operators, architects, engineers, operator and suppliers of all buildings, services, utilities, and products will need to be designed and built very differently with a much greater awareness, adaptability and survivability. Without that, we will see “un-developing” utility grids, and greater harm and hardships for years to come. Those with the resources can self-provide power generation and storage, which will be a minority for years to come. But we will all suffer as more of our friends, family, neighbors and fellow citizens and ourselves have greater hardships and death that we will all have a responsibility to protect. If not, our developed, safe and comfortable society will degrade, and that will affect us all emotionally and economically. I hope our utility services, builders, city managers and each of us will drive to solve for these challenges before we literally crumble as a great society as others have before us due to a lack of infrastructure and planning for the future and all members of that society. We have much work to do.