How Secure is the Nation's Power Grid?

23ABC News

The heat of summer isn't letting up and while a lot of us have escaped rolling blackouts this summer the threat to the nationwide power grid is very real.

Transcript

00:00 The heat of summer isn't letting up,

00:02 and while a lot of us have escaped

00:04 rolling blackouts this summer,

00:06 the threat is very real.

00:07 This is Buddy Haston and he is the CEO of

00:10 Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation.

00:13 I interviewed him to understand the power

00:15 grid and why these blackouts happen.

00:17 The reason we've been seeing outages is

00:20 because we've been running out of supply.

00:23 Now he says we can't just rely on wind and solar.

00:27 We still need energy from nuclear,

00:29 natural gas and coal.

00:30 But see,

00:31 this doesn't seem like a long term solution

00:33 in the battle against climate change.

00:35 So I'm about to reach out to Project

00:38 Drawdown, which calls itself the world's

00:40 leading resource for climate solutions.

00:42 The challenges are new,

00:44 but we face challenges continuing

00:46 with what we've done before as well.

00:49 So let's choose the challenge that gives

00:51 us clean energy in the long term.

00:53 Amanda Smith is a scientist who

00:55 studies energy infrastructure at

00:56 nonprofit project Drawdown.

00:57 She agrees with Haston that we need

01:00 diversity in the power system,

01:01 not just in the fuel source,

01:03 but in the type of power plant

01:05 and the infrastructure.

01:06 It doesn't happen overnight,

01:08 but she says there are solutions that are

01:10 making wind and solar more reliable.

01:12 We're getting better and better at

01:14 predicting when and where wind and solar

01:16 energy is going to be available and when

01:19 it's not. So we're pooling resources,

01:20 right? So that if the sun goes down

01:23 in one place or is shaded by a cloud,

01:26 we're connected to other parts of the grid.

01:28 The other big part of reliability

01:30 is the ability to store energy.

01:32 We don't have control over the speed of the

01:35 wind, but we can kind of gain that control

01:37 back right if we're able to store energy.

01:40 We can store energy in water right?

01:42 And then run the water through a

01:44 turbine when we need to extract that

01:46 energy. There are other innovative

01:48 energy solutions that are climate

01:49 friendly like geothermal heat recovery.

01:51 When you use the super hot water in

01:53 the ground to drive turbines that

01:55 are going to be able to generate

01:57 energy, it's also possible to

01:59 generate energy from waves or methane

02:01 digesters. Smith says the answer

02:03 moving forward is having a grid that

02:05 is more interactive and distributed

02:07 instead of us relying on centralized

02:09 power plants that contribute to carbon

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