Our electrical grid is crumbling. Here's why.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ธ.ค. 2021
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With climate change making temperatures more extreme each year, like we recently saw in the great Texas freeze and the Northwest heatwave, large-scale power outages become a matter of life and death. In 2003, a few transmission lines went down in Ohio leading to cascading failures across the Northeast and over 50 million people losing power. This event points toward critical vulnerabilities in our aging power grid.
Could a power grid failure during an extreme weather event be the most deadly weather disaster in US history? And what can we do to prevent this kind of catastrophic blackout? Watch to find out.
Weathered is a show hosted by weather expert Maiya May and produced by Balance Media that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare.
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Having lived for more than 20 years in Houston Texas I have experienced some very extreme weather between hurricanes, floods and freezing temperatures with ice and snow. I learned from the 2005 hurricane Katrina that I need to be prepared for a major power outage. I saved money for several years and in 2008 bought a large portable generator for $700. That saved me several times. First when we lost power for 2 weeks following 2008 hurricane Ike. Then again in 2017 following hurricane Harvey when we had no power for a week. Finally in 2021 during the big Texas freeze when we had no power for 4 days. People spend too much money for entertainment and not enough becoming prepared for an emergency. Be prepared for yourself so you are not a victim of societies failures.
And, be prepared with enough fuel stored if you are going to run your genset for more than a few days.
that's good, but wouldn't it now be worth looking at solar & batteries, so that your investment can pay off itself in everyday savings & be available without the need for additional fuel in the case of an emergency? In 2005 a generator was the obvious choice, but nowadays I'd be looking at adding some solar panels & batteries into that mix & long term replacing that generator with them, so that you can constantly save on your electricity bill as well as being set for emergencies
So very true !!!! People have become dependent on infrastructure and government to make sure everything we need is there when we need it 🙄
We need to be prepared and be able to take care of ourselves because there is more to come !!!
What kind of generator do you have ? I’ve been going to buy one for several years but don’t know which one to get, as now they are more money and quite an investment so I want to get a good one !
@@ronpiper8496 Better yet: Be prepared for the absence of fossil fuels: Build a foundation with solar/wind generators, wood stoves, rocket stoves, etc. I've been a Survivalist for decades and don't have a fuel-run generator. They make noise for starters, which makes like a magnet for all the un-prepared Umericans who are going to flock to your house. That's the future we're heading towards, anyway. Not saying you can't have a fuel run generator, but be prepared to live in the absence of one.
@@rnupnorthbrrrsm6123 seriously, look at solar panel & battery systems. You can put solar panels on your roof & hook them up to the grid in such a way that they contribute to your everyday power needs, but that you still pull from the grid whenever you don't produce enough power of your own & in some places you can even be paid to put your power into the grid if you are producing more than you need, but even without that, drawing from your panels means your power bill drops as an ongoing pattern & in a situation where the grid goes down, as long as you set it up properly, your system separates itself from the grid & runs as per normal from it's batteries (although of course when you use all your available power in your batteries, your power then turns off, so you'll need to use only what you are producing in that setting.
What I describe is standard practice for a lot of homes in Australia & probably parts of where you live too. People in Australia who have experienced power outages of weeks due to severe storms will install the above system to prevent a repeat. Note that standard solar panels connected to the grid will go down when the grid goes down, it's when people in Australia experience this that they add the battery pack into their system to prevent it next time. These systems are on par with generators in price nowadays, but the solar systems pay themselves off, due to always giving you electricity & so reducing what you have to buy from the grid
Glad to see this type of information is becoming more mainstream. We'll be facing a different future and preparedness will be a critical component to ensure we can make it through.
The more this becomes normalized the safer we'll all be. We can all prepare for inevitable intermittent failure and still have nice things. Also love the recent discussion on Think Preparedness.
Oh hey, thanks for the comment and all you do to help folks prepare. Love your channel! I've been watching for a while. Let's collaborate on an episode, eh?
@@pbsterra sure! Feel free to go to my About page and reach out to me via the contact tab to chat more. Talk soon!
@@CityPrepping and @PBSTerra - it would be very cool to see you collaboration. Both very thoughtful, careful researchers who communicate very clearly to help people understand and live better lives within the human predicament. Exciting to think about the synergies between the two channels!
This is one of the most important messages to our people covid killed how many just because people who couldnt get a bed in a hospital like cancer patients its near rivaling covid because our infrastructure cant keep up with a natural disaster little alone 100 a year
2 years of being homeless had to of been the worst power outage I faced. Glad to be out of the woods on that experience but at least I know how to tackle the situation.
I’m glad you are doing better
Stay bless up sis
🙏🏼 Thank you! Happy to share the hope that there is always a new day! Going to be starting a charity or non profit aimed towards helping give women who are survivors of human trafficking and abuse a chance to start again. I meet too many people who are suffering and need help to move forward financially, emotionally, a safe harbor so to speak. I hope the dream becomes a reality!
#Blessed
astrophotographers living in the city: its showtime baby
Starlink and similar projects: "Lemme stop you right there".
this is probably apocryphal, but I heard that in one blackout in LA, there are a number of 911 calls about UFOs because people have never seen the milky way
@@1224chrisng wth xD
@@NimbleBard48 atleast as of now starlink and similar projects aren't THAT widespread of a nuisance.
During the post-Ida outage I was able to see the Milky Way from normally Bortles 9 skies in the middle of New Orleans, and got some decent images. It was a really welcome bonus, though I definitely would've preferred having power for those two weeks.
This topic deserves a lot more attention. As someone who experienced the PNW heatwave with no AC, the idea that those events will continue to become more frequent every year is terrifying. It was miserable and I'm young and healthy, I can't imagine how the most vulnerable felt.
I lost AC in my place and I relate completely.
Get a generator and be ready for the next outage. Who do people survived before the AC ?
@@vietcongbuondanbannuocphan1791 Most of the people in the US are descendants of people from moderate climates. Maybe that’s the reason they can’t deal with extremes. I still live in one of those countries and I know I can’t.
Besides, the heatwaves have become longer and more extreme because of climate change.
@@kellydalstok8900 One major factor is not only our ancestors but even the temperatures our bodies are exposed to during the weeks and months leading up to extreme temperature exposure. If you've ever flown from a cold north latitude to the equator, the first few days are the hardest but your body does adapt over a relatively short time. That's why heat waves in places like the PNW can be especially dangerous.
@@vietcongbuondanbannuocphan1791 and what if you can’t get fuel due to everyone wanting it at same time so it’s out at the pump? Best solution, solar and batteries. Plus fuel stations need power and if there is none then you aren’t getting fuel to run your generator
I lived through the 2003 NorthEast blackout. Cash was KING! If you needed supplies you had to have cash on hand. So that taught me an extremely valuable lesson at 12 years old! Keep cash in your home for emergency situations. It doesn't have to be a lot but you should have some small bills around your house for these types of emergencies. The COVID 19 lockdown also taught me to keep a stocked pantry and emergency supply kits. Things were so hard to find during that time that when things came back on the shelf I was sure to stock my pantry and have maintained my stock throughout 2021. This is a case of "you live and you learn".
Cash is a great suggestion! I find myself keeping cash in my disaster backpack... and pinching it every now and then. Usually I remember to replace it.
An excellent idea.
Food can last awhile for canned but a good reminder to also have enough water (3 or more days worth) and freshen the supply if needed.
In this video, you forgot to mention the possibility of an extreme geomagnetic storm triggered by violent solar flares interfering with power grids potentially all over the world. And not just for days or weeks either - probably months or even years, worse comes to worst. If there were to be another such event along the lines of the 1859 Carrington Event, boy we'd all be in big trouble!
That would really set back human cooperation...that is why we need better battery storage...or whatever Lockheed has in the vault
You're correct, a massive solar storm in 1989 knocked out part of Quebec's energy grid for hours, and a Carrington event would be even worse.
@@jamesfriesen191 I would say exponentially worse than my own Quebec in 1989, in terms of both time length and the number of places around the world affected.
Worst power outage I’ve been in: the great Midwest flood of 1993. The river that encircled my parents’ farm ran backwards and grounded the power lines. I think we went more than a week without power, losing all of our refrigerated and frozen food, and having to sleep with the windows open because it was summer. My siblings and I had to travel to our grandparents’ for bathing and laundry. Rough time, but survivable.
I didn't lose power in the 93 floods, but had no running water for 12 days.
I lived in Iowa during the 2020 derecho which is mostly forgotten but pretty much my whole city was without power for 2 weeks and we aren’t used to outages like that. The wind storm basically was like a small land hurricane but in the Midwest. We aren’t equipped to deal with that kind of wind here. It was hard to get food, gas, most people couldn’t work since they worked from home and needed internet. Power lines down blocked several roads. Half the traffic signals didn’t work. It also tore down our cell towers and so it was hard to communicate if we were OK-and what sucks is 130,000+ people without power for WEEKS and it barely made a blip on the national news. We needed help and it’s amazing that kind of population in immediate need got no attention.
There's also the off chance of massive power outages due to coronal mass emissions from the sun as the current sunspot cycle ramps up. We need to update the infrastructure to accommodate those kinds of instances as well.
Yes yes yes! Stay tuned for an upcoming episode on this. It's a real threat and one that power companies are planning for.
Yeah, this is the real society ending threat. One really strong EMP from the sun, we are headed back to the dark ages.
Or emp from nefarious ppl
@@kevin3434343434 can't wait
We have procedures and practices in place to avoid widespread outages from solar weather (CMEs don't cause blackouts. You're thinking of geostorms)
Since moving to the city the most uncomfortable I've been was last year after many people in the state voluntarily turned down our heat to help others during a winter demand for power. Eventually we all lost power for about 5-6 hours with sub-zero temperatures and high winds. Temperatures might have reached the 50's in my home before power came back on, but it had me worried.
It should be a requirement that at minimum all residents have an emergency plan filed with their LOCAL neighborhoods and volunteer emergency captains on every block or housing complex. That could save many a life.
Family in Houston ran out of gasoline for power during a hurricane a few years back. I sent them an emergency provision kit. I felt crazy for doing it. Last year they used the kit and thanked me for it. I hope you air this video on public television station multiple times over.
And this is why we are switching to wood burners for heat.
Nice! We're always suggesting to friends and relatives that they get an emergency kit. What was in yours???
@@johnneveu1718 Be careful, wood burners are responsible for some deaths in cold spells because of the released carbon monoxide.
Thank you for following Rule 303.
Please view many ways to creat warmth on a smaller room with two clay pots and small votive candles! For light, a large can of crisco with tall plain stick candles pushed into the crisco will burn for many hours! Lots of cheap ways to heat in case of emergency! Even putting up a small tent in your room to sleep in
1998 ice storm in Montreal.
We talk about this storm every year. My grandmother was ok because she has a wood burning stove in her kitchen, she brought her bed in and did all of her cooking on the wood stove. I think a diversity of power sources is the best way to stay safe for whatever unexpected events come our way.
The last major blackout I remember was when a power transformer blew out in my neighborhood, leaving one side of the street without power while the other side was still on. The transformer had been in want of replacing for a while but Southern California Edison neglected it for too long until it was too late.
We have planned outages here is power grid is upgraded. Usually in the 2-8AM hours on a sunday morning at mostl
There are SOOO many aging parts of the grid, it's a real liability. What was the weather like when that happened?
17 years ago my Mom’s twin sister flew from LA up to Portland Or. to celebrate their 80 birthday. Her plane was the last one to be allowed to land because of an ice storm. She had to stay at my house (5 min from airport) with broken water pipes and an insufficient furnace. My poor Southern Californian Aunt wasn’t ready for a Portland Oregon ice storm.
15 years later we were a refuge from Southern California fires.
Ooft, which fire(s)? Also, welcome to Portland!
Strenghtening the electrical grid is necessary, but IMO part of the solution is better insulation on buidings, so they use less energy to heat and cool in normal circumstances, and keep confortable longer even with a blackout.
Also, if your AC is set at a temperature you're confortable with, why lower it when it's getting hotter outside ? The AC would already use more energy just to keep it the same, but lowering it worsens the load on both the AC installation and the grid (and your bills), and also worsens the thermal shock you get each time you're going outside or coming back inside, which in turn makes the heat even more insufferable.
Or ya know .. be less reliant on electric
@@MaekarManastorm easier said than done
@@WanderTheNomad perhaps , but humans need to learn.
Their way is not the only way .
Not sure how the weather is where you live.
I visited my brother in Japan during the summer time and it is super hot and humid there, 90+ degrees Fahrenheit and 60% or higher humidity. Night time is not much cooler with temps still hovering in the high 80s with even more humidity. My brother has to run his AC all day and night. It’s dangerous not to use AC. Children in Japan are often sent to hospital for heat exhaustion because their school did not have AC, and elderly people die from heat stroke because they didn’t turn on AC. Homes and Apartments in Japan are not well insulated either.
I am fortunate to live in a place that has comfortable weather most of the year with some hot summer days but not hot enough to be dangerous.
@@MaekarManastorm Like I said, insulating buildings would be a good way to be less reliant on electricity, since heating or cooling are often the main energy consumption for households.
But I don't think electricity is the problem anyway; on the contrary, depending how and where it is produced and managed, it could be our best way forward, by switching *to* electricity what is now powered by dirtier, less efficient energy sources (like cars).
Just north of the border, in Québec, any power outage lasting more then 12 hours in freezing weather spells real trouble. The vast majority of houses are heated with electricity. We had our own major power grid outage in 1999 when the ice storm came. They are absolutely savage with trees nowadays and don't mess around when building new lines. Also very notable at 1:45 when they talk of the north-east blackout is the fact that Québec stayed up. There are a number of back to back inverters that isolate the grid from other network. That prevented the failure from cascading into Québec. This is a solution which should be implemented in the US to lower the risk of cascading failures.
Actually, the ice storm was in 1998, but very well said Jonathan!
The Texas Winter Storm went for me like this, after being told there would be rolling blackouts:
Outage 1: 5 minutes, if that
Outage 2: 15 minutes
Outage 3: 1 hour
Outage 4: 3 days
It convinced me to start saving to get a Powerwall to add to my legacy 2016 SolarCity solar system, only to have Tesla then stop selling it as a standalone and require an entire new solar panel install...and I still have a 15 years of a warranty left on the 'old' one.
For people that want solar on their roof, GET STORAGE. If you don't have battery storage and your power goes out in the middle of a bright sunny day, you WILL lose power too. It's a safety measure called anti-islanding, look it up.
I've got two powerwalls. In 2.5 years I've had 40+ per failures, up to 6 hours long. Lights don't even flicker. Stinks Tesla did this though
There are many manufacturers other than Tesla.
It is not an exclusively US thing, but it is certainly a very big thing for the US.
The whole of the country's infrastructure is not up to the standards required by current weather, much less so for the weather that will come.
Every year there are billions of damages for properties destroyed by hurricanes... and yet the US keep on building wooden houses with little to no foundations (and those houses are fri***g expensive to boot). There is no plan for an earthquake catastrophe. People are still happily building in Southern California.
People are also still happily building huge cities (Las Vegas anyone) in the desert. With poor water supply and no hint of environmentally friendly architecture.
It's a huge mess.
idraote. Yes it is
In the 30 years I have been building and remodeling homes there has been a huge change with what is required. There is so much more required now that has led to more expensive houses. It's expensive to build homes that can withstand all extreme conditions.
My record is about I think 6 weeks after Hurricane Wilma. I'll be happy to never repeat that experience.
I live in Oregon during the freeze and lived w/o hot water or heat for 11 days. Infrastructure is soooooooo IMPORTANT!!! Plus, crime, it was pitch black outside!!! I kow where a lot of folks stand on these issues, but please remember to vote and do not get lazy!!! This is for all the marbles!!! I am talking to the young adults who don't vote. YOU MUST!!! We are counting on you!!!
Ha! Me too, snowzilla, 11 days w/o power, 2019. I have wood heat, but even it suffered because no power to blow fans.
I lived through Icepocalypse in Austin, Texas! Fortunately I live near a major medical clinic so the local grid never lost power, but we were without water for days and lot of the city had to go to 'warming shelters'. And Austin is a modern city! ERCOT was 100% to blame, they didn't take the risk seriously. Lose power? Blame a politico, they're holding back the money, people! DEMAND SAFETY.
I live in the PNW. The heat this past summer was really high compared to normal for what felt like most of the summer. There are so many of us that don't have AC because in years past, it only gets in the upper 80s or low 90s maybe a day or two out of the year. It hasn't been worth installing AC in our homes.
Yep, I live in Portland and I think it'll be really interesting to see how many more people have AC next year. The June/July heat waves were the first time BPA exceeded their peak winter power usage... yikes! Are you thinking about getting AC?
@@ElementalWildfire After the first heat wave my husband said F this and we had one installed. The installation was finished just days before the second big one. It was just way to hot this summer to not get one. Also, with Covid, going somewhere inside for the day was impossible and we have pets.
@@Melinda_WA_US COVID made it a bit of a double whammy, didn't it. You couldn't have everyone gather in the public library where the AC is typically rather adequate, for example.
My most memorable one was the Derecho on August 10th 2020. No cell service for 6 days (we had just, finally, shut down our landline the spring of 2020) & no power for 10 days. I’m immuno compromised. The heat was killing me & the house was just as hot because the flippers we bought our 1920 house from glassed in the big picture window in the living room & the slightly smaller one on the back dining room wall. We couldn’t get a cross breeze at all. Due to my health issues I don’t handle heat well. Everyone but me in the family were able to leave & go to generator (or power supply fixed) cooled work places. Best suggestion I got was from a friend in Oregon. I was dousing my head/hair with hose water, sitting on our porch in the shade, which helped. She suggested sticking my feet in some type of tub filled with enough hose water to cover my feet. I found an old metal tub in the attic of the garage & used that. I must’ve looked silly sitting in my porch hockey with wet hair & feet in a tub of water but it helped me not have heat stroke!
Our side of town was last to get power back because we are the oldest section, other than downtown, with the largest & oldest trees, plus a jacked up grid due to how power was installed into already built houses & neighborhoods. I’m super glad that I’ve stuck to my guns on not replacing our natural gas water tank or stove as they both still worked. We didn’t have to cook meals on a BBQ for 10 days straight like some of our neighbors. We also still have a wood burning fireplace that we’ve used when power has gone out due to ice or snow.
Here in The Netherlands, most of our electricity grid is underground. Only the major high voltage lines are mostly above ground. If one line false, there’s almost always a bypass line. And we can get it from our neighboring countries.
the problem with that is scale. the netherlands is a small and densely populated country. It can be incredibley common in the middle of the country to have mile long driveways between house and road. To have so many buried cables would increase the cost of maintenance to an untenable amount
The other trouble with underground lines is maintenance. Practical Engineering posted a great explanation of why “Repairing Underground Power Cables is Nearly Impossible”.
@@trevinbeattie4888 the underground in the Netherlands is quite soft.
I live in the SF Bay Area. My concern is our next 1906 size earthquake that will start all the power grid wires and towers to start dancing. Double dutch jump rope with 6 or more wires. At over 100kV, wires do not have to touch to short, just get close to each other to arc. Then there are the towers that collapse. I expect the entire backbone power grid that rings the Bay Area to shut down before the shaking stops. What will the shedding of all this power have on the western grid? Not just homes and businesses, but the many massive data centers here in the Bay Area. Shedding of tens or hundreds of terawatts in less than 2-3 minutes.
Then there are all the wooden power poles running down most streets. Many of which are 50-70+ years old and are overloaded with phone, cable and internet wires.
Worst of all is that we will have zero warning other than the nebulous "sometime in the next 20-40 years".
I've never ever experienced a power outage in five decades. I wonder if it could be related to the fact that I live in Germany? 🧐
Yeah, with 15 minutes of avg. blackout time we have the most reliable grid in the world and the US with more than 300 minutes among the least reliable one.
@@deathgun3110 Wow, I haven't seen these numbers but they do make sense. Can you share a source???
Friend of mine lost power for 3 days because of a tornado not far from Munich! Boy was I surprised to hear that happened in Bavaria only a few years ago.
@@tarot_esoterica_with_erin The only Tornado I can remember here in our region was in Gersthofen, next to Augsburg, but also not far from Munich. I live in Augsburg and didn't notice anything, whereas less than 5 miles away some roofs were blown away. That was a bit scary, to be honest. Maybe there was an outage in Gersthofen, but these are really rare in Germany over all.
@@hape3862 I understand. My friend said that while his power was out for 3 days, a friend of his only a couple of blocks away never lost power.
Worst power outage I was in was the 2013-2014 midwest icestorm and polar vortex. We lost power for 8 days and couldn't afford a generator. The house was too cold to even stand in by day 3 so we ended up sheltering at the local school. No power of Christmas and my family refers to the entire incident as "black christmas" in honor of the prolonged blackout. Our Christmas breakfast was McDonald's and it took us 45 minutes to order. We will never forget.
It took 10 days after hurricane Irma to restore my power. To be fair that blackout hit most of Florida. There were a few nights I got to see the most stars ever since there was less light pollution.
Nothing beats the 2008 blackout in Québec, where about 6 inches of icing crashed power lines on thousands of km. That cut power and heating to 3 millions around Montréal, in february, with -25C canadian winter.
The devastation was so widespread it took 3 months to plug the last pockets.
The worst weather event I was a part of was the 2009 ice storm that hit Indiana and Kentucky. It was at least a week or two before our area ended up getting power back. As much as I like colder weather, I don't want to go through that again.
Wow! That's a long time. Did you have any alternative heat in your house like a woodstove?
I remember that storm thank God we had a wood stove and kerosene lamps we put our food in coolers outside and we melted snow for water on the wood stove we were without power for 2 weeks unfortunately forgot to have batteries for the radio so it was two weeks of staring at the wall
Over a million people in Kentucky alone lost power from that one. I remember and was waiting to see a comment for it
I got a natural gas generator in the summer of 2020 because I couldn't imagine being in a pandemic and without electricity after a hurricane, like I was after Hurricane Ike for thirteen days. I never dreamed it would be needed in winter, but then we had the ERCOT failure in February of 2021. My neighbors sheltered with me for a while. Now they have their own natural gas generator.
Southeast Texas (Houston) Hurricanes, Freezes, and Flash flooding are part of life down here. Investing in a generator for those storms is good to keep the fridge running. But here the building of homes needs to change to prepare for zero to hundred degree weather and have solar with battery added.
Not just zero to hundred, but having it swing from one extreme to the other in hours.
Dry ice for your fridge & freezer is a lot cheaper than a generator. I agree with the rest of your comment.
Funny, I was telling a friend about the Northeast Blackout last night. My dad and I were visiting New York at the time and were set to fly out of JFK the next morning. We sat around eating cannoli (which would go bad without the fridge) and listening to the emergency radio. When we went to the airport the next morning (which had gotten power back), the newspapers all had pictures of the total gridlock in NYC and people walking home over the Brooklyn Bridge. It felt apocalyptic.
I also live in Central Texas and experienced the winter storm, which also felt apocalyptic. My apartment kept power because we were near a hospital, but we lost water and, with that, heat. I also HAD to be on the road because I care for a woman with cerebral palsy who cannot get into or out of bed on her own. Seeing the roads iced over and empty, and PILES of snow when normally we had none... It was like being in a different world.
I’m closer to Galveston but we got snow & ice down here, too. Lost power, heat & water. The snow/ice was pretty (and I prefer It to summer heat) but so weird.
So interesting that you experienced both. Would you agree with our assessment in the video of the potential risk for larger and longer blackouts during extreme temp events?
@@ElementalWildfire Absolutely. Especially since ERCOT and the Texas government have done nothing to improve our grid, and it's under even more strain now with a new Samsung factory and a couple of crypto mining operations here in Central Texas. My friends, family, and I are all preparing for when the next winter storm happens - not IF, but WHEN. With global climate change, it's only reasonable to assume that extreme temperatures are going to continue, if not worsen, and I wish that Texas would step up to prepare for these events.
Speaking of not so extreme, during my childhood in my grandmother's village in India, we only used to have power from evening post sunset i.e 6.00 PM till sunrise, i.e 5.00 AM, but we never thought of it as problem it was normal for us.
This is an excellent point. Not having electricity is made more dangerous because we've build our lives and supply chains around it.
Here in Connecticut - We have Eversource. So we have been assured that there will be major outages due to corporate greed and major cuts to upgrades and routine maintenance. Self sufficiency has been the only option. Amazing that this has been allowed to occur.
Price gouging and greed - the hell with their customers!!
Living thirty years in a Redwood rain forest, longest outage was 1995 Russian River flood. My hill went 9 days with no power and 7 days with no water. Much easier to get used to no power than no water.
I can manage ok with temps in the 30's and 40's at night, but I'd be in trouble if we got in the 20's and didn't get above freezing during the day. I have an indoor propane heater and a couple of big propane canisters, but that would only help for a couple weeks, if used cautiously. Probably ought to get a couple more cans, at least. There seems to be too many people talking about the grid going down lately.
I think that you guys have the solar component wrong. You should be creating solar over parking structures. Doing solar on rooftops is very prone to problems. Doing it over open parking lots creates shade and generates revenue for the businesses that implement these processes.
Great point!
If down right, solar panels can go over agriculture, if it can move, so plants have regular shade & less sun. The result being less water needed for irrigation.
@@Honeypot833 yet another genius idea. Thanks for making this point. I believe that they call it agro-voltaic farming?
I live in the PNW...the heat wave was brutal. But anyone that's paying attention should know by now that not only are things going to get bad weather wise but it's going to be happening all the time. Events like heavy snow and rain or extremely hot and cold weather will be the norm...if you not prepared to be without electrical power for a lease 3 to 4 weeks, you will find yourself, and your family, up shit creek without a paddle... You need to start prepping NOW....and by prepping I don't mean running off to Costco to buying 100 roll of toilet paper...If you don't have food, you won't need toilet paper. GOOD LUCK
I survived the Texas freeze in Galveston. It was an event that had not occured in over 100 years. We went without water and power for 84 hours. Being a Gulf Coaster I've my fair share of extreme weather, but the freeze was extreme for extreme. We had ice inside the house. The temp inside the house got down to 34. A lot of people lost their lives in the freeze. We can do better and we should do better!
So glad you are still here. There is nothing I can do for you - I'm far away in a warm blue state and my taxes and grid don't help you at all - except wish you the best. With all my heart.
@@intercat4907 thank you for your kind words!
Those are communication lines, not power lines at 5:23 to 5:31.
Most people have no idea where their home electricity comes from or how it might fail for more than a few seconds. Electric utility companies should work to educate the public on things they can do in the event of impending failure of the power grid. Just as schools have fire drills, homes should have off-line (no power) drills. At least this might keep folks from bringing generators inside and dying from carbon monoxide poisoning during outages. This video helps.
Longest outage was over 5 days due to a strong wind storm that caused about 1.1m homes in Michigan to lose power in 2017. We now have a whole home generator vs portable as we are on a well and the lack of electricity for so many days means no showers or drinking water.
Per the Farmers Almanac, supposed to have an equally terrible winter coming. I hope changes have been made, and improved since last year. We were caught in Texas storm. We lost power for a few hours, but water for 3.5 days. (The city water went down, not due to pipes freezing.) It was horrible and impacted cooking to pets to hygiene. Scary, scary to think about the future without serious, 100% investment in improving our infrastructure.
Per THE NOAA.. this winter is gonna be a joke ... so scientigic atmosphereic study vs historic data ... make your choice
I don't really understand how the American grid fails on such a large scale. A power plant blew up near me recently, I was unaffected and the people who were closer to the plant were without power for a few hours at most. How do you get a whole region without power for days?
Well the grid is remarkably reliable and redundant we're just putting so much strain on it combined with the extreme weather.
Someone in the gov turns it off to create panic about climate change so they can further control citizens :)
I personally believe that local production & distribution is most important; this theoretically is also the most efficient, because a lot of power is lost trying to push power down a powerline. Secondly, building out the grid more is like getting some help from your neighbors when you need it. 😁
Yep, I agree with you! But in order for lower carbon renewables like wind and solar to become more of the energy make up, at least for now we need transmission from the high potential for wind and solar areas. Definitely a trade-off though! All those high voltage transmission lines come with problems too.
Catch Is - are people willing to pay for a much more robust grid system ( and loads of extra generation capacity just In case ) as well as their own personal solar panels and batteries -
It'll be that winter storm or when it's super hot at night and everyone has a/c running flat out that'll screw everything ..
Our city built its own power generation which unlocks us from PG&E. Still, there's a lot of security in investing, individually, in power banks for the house.
Super storm sandy was really bad. 10 days no power. We took in my friend who lived in the valley. Luckily we had a gas stove so we could still cook and had hot water. But man it was scary
We survived hurricane Irma in 2017 in St. Thomas, USVI. The island was without power not for weeks but several months. I was on island for eight days before leaving on a rescue cruise ship back to the US. It was the worst experience not only pumping and boiling water but to see all the destruction was deeply demoralizing. The story in Puerto Rico and the Florida keys are similar if not worst.
Wow! Glad you're OK! Were you visiting or do you live there?
@@ElementalWildfire I was living there. It was still in graduate school at UVI for marine science.
Can we talk about how farms are unsustainable and need to diversifie and reduce chemical use.
Watch a show called Dirt
Great video! Another solution that we should be considering is distributed large scale power storage using the battery-swapping stations of electric vehicles. This would require standardization at the federal level.
18 days in a snow storm. Cooked and melted snow for water on the wood stove. Used that water for flushing toilets, cooking, drinking...etc. Ate lots of dry and canned goods.
After Hurricane Wilma in South Florida, my neighborhood was without power for about 3 weeks, but my house was for 8 weeks as the storm ripped the electric box from the side of our home. We moved into a hotel for the last 4 weeks as soon as our first insurance check was received and a neighbor was kind enough to run a heavy-duty extension cord across the street for us to use while I was cleaning up during the day.
I was in the same one. 4-5 major hurricanes that year. 6 weeks without power for me. A tornado had torn apart a strip mall across the street and my workplace had been demolished to never reopen again.
@@garybutler1672 Yeah, we had quite a few hurricanes over those years. I got very efficient at living without electricity short term. But 4 weeks was long enough! It's easier when you live near enough to the coast in a sub-tropical clime though. I can't imagine doing it in the winter up north. Or stuck inland with no breeze.
My favorite hack was filling a large metal stockpot with water every morning, leaving it to sit covered in the sun all day, and having HOT water to wash up with in the evening when I was filthy from clearing up the damage.
Our roof peeled off and soaked a third of the ceilings so I had to pull that down and get the insulation out before it got too moldy. Fun times. We lived with plastic ceilings for almost two years before it was all fixed, but got a new roof and stayed in our home.
@@nanszoo3092 I'm grateful that this happened to me during the FL winter. At the time I joked that we couldn't "live" without AC. After seeing people dying during heatwaves in more recent years I realise that heat is no joke and we actually couldn't live without AC. Meaning a 4-6 week power outage in the wrong season would be much more deadly.
It's nice to see this information out there. Note, though, that the solutions proposed at the end of the videos are not even in anybody's planification yet. I think it's important to mention that the solutions mentioned are what would be nice to do to face our problem, but it's not what is actually being put in place. The US is allergic to any allocation of money to infrastructure and to anything public. Just tell us when you see somebody starting to work on this. As a reminder a temperature of 95F combined with a humidity of 100% kills a young, healthy human resting motionless in the shade. A huge catastrophe in the Southeast is just years away, not decades.
9:30 I doubt making the grid more reliant on smart appliance and the internet is a good idea, it just moves the failure point from the grid to telecoms, and neither are particularly resilient. If we do persue it, then we need to build in backups
It's a good point and I definitely share that concern BUT simply hardening the current system is probably not a solution up to the task. I think as we move forward we need to have every upgrade and change be more resilient and more redundant and smart grids are just one part of the equation. But they have to function without telecoms as well.
I grew up 26 miles outside of a small town in Oregon. We were the last people on the line. If a tree fell we had to wait for the entire line to be repaired to have power. We were too far in the mountains to get TV and barely any radio. We would go sometimes a month or 2 with no power. We had a creek right there. Boiled water. Firewood for heat and cooking. I think I learned a lot from that experience
What town? Some of the Weathered crew is Portland based.
@@pbsterra I lived closest to sweet home on hwy 20 going to sisters. I lived at the mountain house restaurant and store.
The majority of Cedar Rapids, Iowa residents were without power for over a week in 2020 after a Derecho downed 60 percent of our trees. That was just 18 months ago and another one just happened. In December. My household was without power for 7 days after the storm in 2020. The cardiology clinic I work at was not able to see patients for a week due to a combination of no electricity and also water damage on the floor above us. The threat is real. And more people around me seem to acknowledge that. I hope more people keep making the connection between "crazy weather" and the climate crisis. I cannot "be thankful for the warm weather in December" when all I see is impending doom.
The derecho was really surprising to me. The Weathered team was in Iowa just after it happened and it was amazing how many people, homes, and of course trees were affected. I didn't know another one happened. Should we do an episode on what a derecho is???
I'm not an expert by any means, but would it not be better to have smaller micro-grids instead of three macro-grids? At least then, one part goes down, then it doesn't cascade into the rest?
I wonder how the grid will hold up to the solar cycle that's going to peak in 2025!
Stay tuned for an upcoming episode where we ask that same question to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center and power companies!
I have always wanted to know why do the power companies in the USA have all the power lines exposed and vulnerable. We have ours in the ground in a lot of places. No danger of wind or tree fall or freezing air temps breaking the power lines.
This is huge! I work for a solar company and so I've been looking into the power grid issues a lot lately. People can do grid tie systems with solar and it helps lessen the demand on the outdated power grid, but it still doesn't help the issue of blackouts. If the grid goes out so does their power. I think it's extremely important for people to switch to solar (for the environmental aspect) and have battery back up so the power grid can't shut off your power. Where I live we have power outages every year and it's usually in the winter when it's cold outside. We're also on a well so that means no water and no flushing toilets. We added a smaller solar with battery back up system so every time people in our area are out of power we're able to stay warm and offer help to other people. I know a lot of people don't realize the power grid we have was built for an estimated number of housholds and built to last a certain length of time. It wasn't built for the high demand that we have on it now and it is so far outdated, that's a huge reason we've been seeing the rolling blackouts. It's an incredible problem that never really gets talked about. I'm really happy to see this video talking about the serious issues we face with weather and power.
im watching every PBS channel, you guys are brilliant
Awwwhh thanks!
As someone living in Scandinavia, I can't help but wonder why the Us doesn't put more power lines in the ground? That will be protect them from the weather. Here we almost never have power outs.
Another factor I can't help but wonder, is, how it would affect the US grid to switch to 220 volts? I'm not an engineer and it's probably not feasible, but it's an interesting thought 🤔
Fun fact, the US (all of North America actually) is 240 volts for residential. It's just that in the service panel it is broken out into two phases of 120 volts each and a vast majority of residential appliances and products are made to run off of 120. Most houses have at least one or two devices using 240 volts. A clothes dryer, a stove, water heater, etc.
Second fun fact, the US is big. Like really big. Huge. Some would say it's really quite large.
We have literally MILLIONS of miles of electrical lines. And much of the US is not comprised of nice soft soil. Just burying electrical lines isn't feasible here. Too much bedrock, too many miles of line. Not to mention the unique problems that come with buried lines. How do you deal with expansion in the line? It can't just sag... Water intrusion kills the line. Degradation issues. Inspection and repair is infinitely harder.
Underground lines are more expensive -in addition to the digging/laying; the cables themselves have to be far better insulated (the towers are used to keep the cables away from each other and the ground), and then there are maintenance issues/costs.
But I agree; underground is needed, for at least some major lines -and it's not just for normal weather but (with shielding) for solar weather as well.
Everything here is run on profit, not true care. That’s the issue in my opinion.
@@Scraggledust Harsh take, but honestly, is human greed a uniquely American problem?
@@nasonguy it's is, when the problem is in America 😉
It was the ice storm in Montreal, Qc in 1998, We were lucky being on the electric grid with our hospital, we served as central for our friends and family,
Not for me, i am off grid. Amazing how much power you can get from a light in the sky!
I grew up in Northern CA when Enron owned PG&E. Brown out and blackouts happened all the time during all point of the year. The climate of that area has changed. If those kinds of events with the heat happening now, it would have been intolerable/deadly during the summer without electricity. Passive cooling of the many older homes isn't good enough, at least not the ones what are cost effective in an earthquake area.
So true. I worry today about wildfires taking out distribution or generation and heatwaves happening concurrently. Seems super scary. Also, weird fact: just before the Enron scandal, the company donated an elephant to the Portland Zoo...
EMP. We're not ready.
Stay tuned for our solar storm episode this winter!
The most extreme power outage I've experienced was after Hurricane Irma. 8 days of no power in Miami meant no A/C in a shuttered home made of concrete 🙃
As neighbors helped each other remove the shutters (metal or wooden), so fresh cooler air could enter the home. On the news, they said it was urgent to remove your shutter as the internal temperature of your home could be around 115 - 120 F°
During the 2003 power outage, my family's dairy farm in Northwest Pennsylvania went dark for three days. Our cows must be milked twice a day in order to maintain their milk supply, and this requires electricity. Like humans, cows will "dry up" if they do not produce milk regularly (ie get milked). It was eerily quiet on our farm. And we had no idea what really caused it or how long it would last (rumors circulated, but remember, we had no power and therefore lacked access to information from television or internet (even if our batteries on our phones were still charged, we were too remote and lacked cell service).
So... what happened to the cows??? Did you have to milk by hand without electricity? Or wait and hope the power came back on in time?
@@pbsterra Our family milked all 30 of them by hand, a little each day--just enough to keep up their milk production.
I loved in New Orleans during Katrina. While that was a power outage not be be outshined, earlier in the summer there was a tropical storm that knocked the power out in my neighborhood for about two weeks. A huge part of the city went black, and most got their power back in hours to days. My neighborhood, lower 9, was the last to get power.
What about the solar flare that took out the telegraph lines in the 19th century.....would be MUCH worse for our power grid.
Ivan, Katrina and Frederick were the most extreme power outage events I ever experienced.
Our longest power outage here in the hills in western Massachusetts was in 2008 after a severe ice storm. Trees were down everywhere - torn in half, major limbs, whole trees. Roads in our neighborhood were just covered in trees. Power was out for 9 days up in our more remote location. When we moved up here, we knew outages were very possible, so we have a woodstove for heat. The biggest weak spot is access to water. We need electricity for our well pump and septic pump. After a night of hearing trees explode and crash, we went out at first light and gathered all the icicles we could. There was no snow to melt. We now have solar panels, but can't afford battery storage yet, so when the grid is down, we still don't have power. We store many, many gallons of water all the time ... just in case.
I've never been in a blackout that lasted longer than six or eight hours, and that only once. I used to live in a city where a strong thunderstorm would often knock out the power but usually only for an hour or two. This would happen several times every summer but was generally just a minor inconvenience.
Lucky. We had 3 weeks without power and was lucky to know someone with 1000 gallons of propane that let me fill up my bottle just to stay warm. no other source of energy, and towards the end, i couldnt even get gas in my vehicle to get to that propane supply and fill up my 5 gallon bottle and it was very cold.
@@elivaughan1192 What was your heat source? Did your furnace work without power or did you have a separate propane heater?
@@ElementalWildfire I had 2 of those wall mounted propane infrared heaters.
Weneed energy corporations regulated MORE and regulated to STRENGTHEN the electrical system. Look at IDA, Entergy's blackout generator failed and 8 main feed lines, all 8 of them, fell....
During the deep freeze in Texas the grid was affected in south Louisiana as well. I actually know of one death, a person related to me who died of carbon monoxide positioning. I have lived through quite a few very intense hurricanes where power was out for days, weeks even the people of south Louisiana have become more adept but still not able to avoid the inevitable consequences of loos of power. Great information thanks .
Up in Shreveport our entire water system collapsed and we had no running clean water for about a month.. It was sad seeing all the attention on Texas when we also got snowed it, I couldn't leave my house for a full week, we had to boil the snow just to have water to do dishes and flush the toilets.
That blackout that happened in 2003 in NYC, I was stuck on the train omw back home. Ever since then I have been prepared for the power grid.
I would love to see a deep dive into this. Like deep . As time goes on, I feel like this is so important to understand to keep my family safe in the future. Maybe talk about better ways to plan for these types of situations.. thanks for the great video. More more more please
Suggest. Solar backup for home. Yesterday
Buy a generator and learn survival skills. I have managed for weeks without electricity by using a generator and my skills learned as a boy scout.
Yeah, I'd love to go deeper. Maybe in future episodes.
We need massive investment in public infrastructure now. We can't afford not to.
Lived in Brazoria county until 2010. had nearly monthly loss of power never shorter than 4 hrs and not related to storms or season. Impacted the community well. Moved to IL , had 2 power losses in 10 yrs, both storm related and restored in less than an hour.
The most extreme weather event I experienced was the ice storm of 1998. Couldn't leave the house because power lines covered in ice sagged into the street. Many snapped, including those in the main Quebec power grid. Lucky we didn't lose power but some were without for weeks. To top it off, temperatures dropped subsequently that caused water mains to break. It was a mess.
Third option: we could work towards being far less dependent on electricity. It's literally only been ubiquitous for less than a century.
You really need spend more time thinking about your position...your hot take is pretty bad tbh.
Modern civilization cannot exist without massive amounts of fairly cheap energy -100 years ago; that was fossil fuels, biomass and manual/animal labour.
Before fossil fuels -it was biomass, manual labour (including slavery) and animals.
We are in the process of replacing all of that with electricity.
What did you mean by this?????
good in theory but I doubt it's possible, the alternative is either fuel or manual labour, and neither practical
The vast, vast, vast majority of human history we lived without electricity. We'll be back there again - or in a situation with very limited amounts of energy - once we run out of fosil fuels and the resources needed to build so-called 'renewable technology.' As John Michael Greer puts it, 'Collapse now and avoid the rush.'
@@mrgrossenbacher86
/facepalm
I'm 43 and live in Chicago and I honestly can't remember the power being out for more than 4 hours in this neighborhood for the pass 20 years.
we installed a grid assist solar system. Very doable for everyone with a roof having sun exposure. It doesn't feed the grid, but supplies you with the power you generate and you use what you can't generate yourself, from the grid. We sized ours to supply all of our essentials incase of grid down scenario. We spent about $20,000 for a 10KW system and installed it ourselves. After we lost power for days in the Texas freeze earlier this year, it seemed prudent. We also bought little buddy heaters which work marvelously and efficiently. There are also mini splits with a SEER rating of 31.. which is phenomenal. The 12,000 btu is the highest you can get in that seer, but that will supply all you need for one room to hunker down in and survive. A very small solar system will support that unit and it has heat as well as cool. We've super insulated one large master bedroom that can act as the hurricane room, which is was we geared it for. But after February showed us how stinkin cold it can get here on the coast, we are set for winter survival as well. I highly suggest stepping up your preps and abode for the worst, we are sure to be tapping that need whether its weather or something else. God bless everyone and stay safe in this crazy world.
Nice work! Does your system include battery storage?
@@pbsterra yes, we purchased 6 of the lithium iron phosphates 48v batteries. That was half the cost of the entire system, but no regrets.
I'm not on the grid. I just bought two more batteries yesterday. I have 16 now that run my 2000 watts inverter. Ten solar panels charge it all up. I've been off grid for a year.
My mother's house had no grid power for about two weeks in the 1998 ice storm but she had a generator which I ran for an hour or two at a time to recharge batteries, meals, keep the fridge/freezer at temperature, run HVAC, check news, etc. My apartment had no power for the first two days, then only a few hours each day for a couple of days before coming back for good. A friend's apartment just one street over only missed power for a day since his street is on the same feed circuit as the local high-school which was a designated emergency shelter for people who had no better place to go.
I was stationed in S Korea in the 90s and we had a blackout from a typhoon that lasted all Saturday at least. The chow hall was shut down, but, oddly, Burger King had a generator ready and was open for business. We tried playing D and D by candlelight to kill time, but it isn't fun when you can't see the dice. We also had a hurricane when I got to North Carolina, my first weekend, and they left us alone. "Put a mattress over the window and good luck" Uncle Sugar takes care of his own.
4 days in Snoqualmie WA with no electricity. Lived downtown right on river at base of Mt. Si. Promised myself I would never live anywhere again that didn't have alternative heat source.
3 days last summer was brutal in Olympia Washington with no AC, more people die from heat stroke than any other weather related situations.
💡 New Yorker here and on the afternoon of August 14, 2003, I was alone, at home, in my living room, listening to Linkin Park's sophomore album, Meteora, when the CD player just stopped. It wasn't long before I learned that it was a blackout unlike I had ever seen before.
🎬 By the way, I would recommend watching 'The Trigger Effect' (1996), an overlooked thriller about a family trying to survive the breakdown of civilization during a major and unforseen blackout.
I love the detail here. So good.
The most extreme power outages I’ve ever experienced were from Hurricane Ivan (04) and Hurricane Katrina (05). During Ivan the heat was unbearable after the storm and during Katrina we didn’t have power for nearly two weeks.
In Iowa, the derecho of 2020 knocked out power in my part of Cedar Rapids for about a week. There's no stores where I lived, so I had to find someone to drive me to another city to get food. Thankfully it was 70 to 80 degree weather the whole time, but it was awful. I also couldn't work and lost a week worth of pay... and my rent had already gone up during the pandemic so it was rough. I had no family in the area either.
It's just going to get worse. In Houston, where I live now, a strong gust knocked the power out in my office for 2 days... thankfully I get paid now for that...
Yes, that was a devastating event! The Weathered crew traveled through the area not long after the derecho and saw the damage. I'm glad you were ok!
@@ElementalWildfire I was fine but the apartment behind me lost an entire chunk of their roof and one had the siding peeled off like an orange. A lot of debris and damaged remained until I left in July this year.
The ice storm of 1972 when there was no electricity in my neighborhood for 7 days in Atlanta, Georgia.
My cousins in Quebec survived literally 15 days in the dead of winter, the first thing to go was there were absolutely no generators left. They huddled in the basement in front of the gas fireplace.
Again, in the Pacific Northwest a few years back (2012 I believe), we had a winter windstorm with local winds exceeding 70mph. We were without power for several days in sub-freezing temps. We got by because we were living in a motorhome at the time and I was able to borrow a generator from my uncle, who lived near where I worked at the time, about 250 miles away.
Lots of northerners didn't know that most of TX doesn't have any way of heating besides electric or natural gas. When the storm hit and both electric and natural gas shortages occured. Most TX homes don't even have fireplaces. Waterpipes froze and broke.
Regenerative agriculture practices can help draw down carbon year round if farmers don't have hundreds of thousands of acres of bare fields. Improving ranches that already have cattle so that they not only support cattle an extra 2 or 3 months per year (or all year) with no outside inputs, but also improve the forage for wildlife while becoming predator friendly (and resiliant) will give ranches more profit and improve water quality coming off of those landscapes via aquifers. Soil health principles can rebalance the carbon cycle and improve the local microclimates. As microclimates work together in a region, the planet's climate improves.
I think the longest was about 6 days in Michigan when I lived in the country. We had a generator that ran the necessities but a lot of stops for gas. Over all it was one of my favorite memories growing up. It's like camping but was more fun.
I was in the 2003 NE Blackout, as a child it didn't really bother me during the day cuz we were playing outside, but then the sprinklers stop and my grandpa took me home, down the block.
We then had to walk 15 flights of stairs, which felt like fooooorever, barring having to stop for my grandfather.
Then I sat in the dying light of the day as it went dark, which made me scared(no lights).
My mom came back with pizza, and I was able to use my radio(it was a boom box, fyi) as a light source/entertainment machine, as it had dual power (both battery & electric cord).
Overall scary with a bit of fun.
The worst I remember as an adult was the outage in the 1990's on Chicago's northside. Some streets got it back fast. Others had grocery stores losing all the refrigerated food. I worked in pet fish and it's not like today where you plan to have and can buy a battery backup for your tanks' air pumps. I start to lean to homes having a powerwall/solar options.
You`d be shocked at how much solar costs to simply power a refrigerator or tiny heater.
No, you can't power a house with an electric car battery, one would need much more storage capacity. The best idea is for totally independent systems, and as a backup use the grid for emergencies. The main problem is, creating your own power system is probably one thousand times as much as (per kilowatt/hour) as using grid power.
Most EVs have more storage capacity (in kWh) than home battery systems. For example, 1 Tesla PowerWall is about 14 kWh while a new Bolt EV battery is 66 kWh and most Tesla Model 3s are between 70-100 kWh. The main issue is that there really aren't any EVs on the market that can do bi-directional power transfer to power your house. They can only charge their batteries but can't output power the other way.
For any house with a battery energy storage solution or a generator, utilities require a transfer switch be installed so that electricity is sent only to your house and not the grid during an outage. Besides the battery, that is the most costly part of getting your home off of being completely reliant on the grid - usually the utility will require that the transfer switch and battery be inspected/approved by them and installed by certain contractors.
in 2011 I was stationed in Great Lakes IL, and shortly after reporting there was a wind storm that knocked our power out for 2 weeks. what made it hard on us was we had a well, so no power means no water either. luckily I was in the navy and could shower on base and refill water bottles at work. I also filled large bottle to flush the toilet.
I was living in a rural area during the 2011 Super Outbreak. Tornado damage shut down our (already unreliable) power for four days. I cooked dinner in a chiminea and left the window slightly open at night, and I remember thinking how grateful I was that it was early April and the temperature was still mild. I dreaded the possibility of a blackout during the summer and I still do. You can cook and heat with a wood fire, but you can't keep cool with one. Passive (or non-power grid dependent) cooling options would be a great topic.