A heat wave in the West is putting stress on power grids
Amy Myers Jaffe talks about the importance of strengthening the U.S. electrical grid as extreme heat and other effects of climate change test the system, via an article in Marketplace.
There is a major heat wave across much of the West and Southwest right now, with tens of millions of people facing temperatures in the 90s and 100s. With all that air conditioning running, there’s stress on power grids, and in Texas and California, people are being asked to lower their power use.
With climate change making this kind of extreme heat more common, strengthening the grid is a priority. A lot of the grid is old and in need of repair.
“We have these new technologies that can be a lot more resilient to temperature changes, and help us with more backup power. We have to install all of that,” said Amy Myers Jaffe at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.