The Power Grid: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Our main story

tonight

is about electricity. He's like Oscar Isaac in the sense that without his participation nothing in my house lights up. Electricity is such an integral part of modern life that it's hard to believe that we used to have to sell people on the idea of ​​home appliances. With ads like this, when you walk into an all-electric home, you walk into a whole new concept of living organized around electrical centers like this entertainment center, the pride and joy of the man of the house is the climate control center, a center that puts you in charge of the electric heating, air conditioning and electronic air filtration of the entire house.

Yes, the pride and joy of the man of the house is, of course, the temperature control system. Just invite all your thermo brothers on a Sunday. Open a few. he prepares and observes the temperature for hours I'm sorry ladies, you wouldn't understand that it's a man thing specifically

tonight

we are going to talk about the electrical

grid

, the system of generators that produce electricity and the enormous network of cables that bring it to our homes . The network is something you probably don't think much about until it goes down, which unfortunately has been happening more and more in recent years.

Millions of Texans woke up to cold homes when the

power

grid

failed. This video shows lights going out as parts of the

power

grid failed that power grid failed yesterday as Hurricane Ida devastated parts of Louisiana the lights went out in downtown Detroit cutting power to 1,400 buildings watch the lights go out during a trial for murder these lawyers were left in the dark holy when the lights go out During a murder trial one of two things happens: either you have a power grid that needs urgent repair or the murder victim has returned as a ghost and is seeking revenge.

Either way, your priorities have changed and it's time to focus on a A much bigger problem if it seems like there have been more power outages than usual recently is because, according to one estimate, between 2015 and 2020, the number of annual power outages in the US .US doubled and that's not good for numerous reasons, the most obvious being sitting without power for any period of time absolutely sucks, what are you supposed to do without TV and internet? Go outside, that's where the snakes live, yeah idiots, so what else are you supposed to do? Read a book, that's where snakes sleep.

They are idiots, why? I think we invented Kindles, but it's not just an inconvenience. Loss of electricity wreaks havoc on everything from sewage treatment plants to water purification systems, and can endanger the lives of people who rely on medical equipment like ventilators and electric wheelchairs. It's traumatizing, it's terrifying for people. disruption is more than just a costly inconvenience, this isn't like I'm going to lose a casserole dish in my refrigerator, you know, I may not be alive tomorrow exactly, this is clearly a lot more than just lost casserole dishes, especially since and let's be Honestly, all stews aren't so much dependent on specific ingredients as they are on whatever's in someone's house.

The casseroles are a sad smoking board with other leftovers desperately cobbled together to make a pathetic almost meal with names like tuna and chicken surprise, sorry, but having a leftover casserole that is abandoned food that didn't make the cut two rounds in a row I'm sorry. , but if that's your only option, there are fates really worse than being dead and look, while things are bad now they could get a lot worse in the future because the United States has a goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which is absolutely necessary meet, but one study estimates that will require a 40 to 60 percent increase in peak electricity consumption, which, if you think about it, it does.

It makes sense if we switch to electric cars, cooking and heating, all that electricity will have to come from somewhere and the truth is that if we suddenly all had an electric car tomorrow, that could be great for the planet but it could take our grid to its limit. Maximum potential. absolute limit, so tonight let's talk about the power grid, the current state it's in and what we can do to fix it. Let's start with the fact that, although I say singular network, our system is actually made up of three networks, there is the eastern one. interconnection the western interconnection and the texas interconnection is basically like major league baseball in the sense that there are two dominant groups and then morons in texas who prefer to make their own rules and it all started in 1882 right here in new york when thomas edison revealed Interestingly, it was Edison's rival, Nikola Tesla, who helped develop the technology that allowed electricity to travel long distances, something even more remarkable given Tesla's, shall we say, eccentricities.

Tesla suffered from strange compulsions such as his need to rescue injured pigeons and nurse them back to health, he has an infirmary for them right outside his bedroom window where he is trying to heal, you know, some that have broken wings, legs broken and, in fact, at one point he referred to a bird having his wife and he said, you know, when she died, the inventive spirit left him, did he do it now? Look, this isn't the point of this story or anything, but if Tesla were alive today, I really wonder what would bother him more, the fact that his name was co. -opted for the first billionaire in history or the fact that modern pigeons have become so unfuckable.

Listen, I respectfully said no, thank you for your attention, but I'm not interested, please leave me and my friends alone and when our electrical grid was built it was It wasn't just a technical marvel, it was a civic marvel until the 1970s. 1930s, electricity was a luxury primarily for dense urban areas of the country, but after FDR created the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935, the area was created by the president and Congress in 1935 to help farmers get power and electricity at a price they can afford here is the first thing women ask for after electricity itself. If you've ever ironed for an hour, you'll know why an electric iron may not seem important to you. a man, but it lightens the load of a whole day for a woman, yes, don't worry, ladies with your husband naturally busy looking at the thermostat, you will have plenty to do to occupy your time, such as ironing your clothes or teaching another woman how to iron your clothes.

And if there's still time to press the iron against your neck just for a moment just to feel something you thought having lights would make things better but it only made things clearer, didn't it? In the end we ended up with 600,000 miles of transmission lines and about five and a half million miles of local distribution lines like the ones you see outside your house, all of which make up our modern electrical grid, it's been called the achievement supreme engineering of the 20th century that does not mean that it is completely invulnerable, of course, not when cables are placed in the air, they will be subject to interference from all kinds of things.

One website that tracked outages found that there were more than 600 outages caused by squirrels. over 200 by birds 53 by raccoons and many others caused by everything from snakes to slugs let me quickly say, congratulations to the slugs for everything on that list, you are honestly the ones I underestimated, to the best of my ability say about you is that on your best day you look like a sassy turd, but you really showed us something by disrupting our power, so once again, slugs, congratulations, but it's not just animals that can wreak havoc, they've also There have been multiple balloon-based disruptions and, if you're wondering.

How on earth could a balloon cause a power outage? The answer is like this. Excellent, not a single note. I hope no one there was hurt, but honestly, even if someone was, it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me, but interruptions have always been a problem. The problem with the electrical grid that makes it especially vulnerable now is a combination of two key factors: the first is old age, most power lines were built in the 50s and 60s with a life expectancy of 50 years that clearly already surpassed and the second. Is it climate change that means there is now more danger posed by extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes, tornadoes and abnormally high or cold temperatures and that combination of old equipment and new weather threats has been disastrous?

The huge bonfire in California a few years ago happened because there was a drought in the area making it essentially a tinderbox and with intense winds some electrical and gas equipment from the Pacific failed and for a pretty infuriating reason this is the hook that killed 84 people That slot took about 98 years to wear out it's not a defect these hooks are what they are holding the power lines out of the ground and Pg e's decision was to just let these things hang until they broke when this old hook broke the power line made contact with the metal tower throwing sparks to the ground, that's how pg and started the bonfire, yes.

And let that be a lesson to you: you can't just keep something this old in place and expect it to keep working forever. They basically took the same approach to their team as the Democrats did with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and in both cases it was true. It's not going to end well, so basically we have a power grid built in the 20th century that is not equipped to cope with the needs and stresses of the 21st century and if you think about it, let's improve it, then yes, absolutely true, but that's also a huge problem. because there are many solutions, both small and large, that the electrical grid urgently needs; the small ones that we don't have time to address tonight, like investing in microgrids and waterproofing, as well as better storage capacities so that the excess energy we generate isn't wasted, but let's focus on the huge one because our change Towards renewable energy will require a fundamental change in what our grid looks like.

One of the few benefits of fossil fuel plants is that they can be put anywhere, which is why most are located near densely populated areas close to the people they serve, but you can't simply replace every plant. of coal with a wind farm because that is not necessarily where the wind is strongest and that fact alone changes everything. is a model created by princeton that maps possible places in the continental united states where wind and solar projects could theoretically be built, plus some offshore wind farms, it is primarily located in the central united states, another study found that These states have the most wind and solar potential, yet the people living there would only account for 30% of electricity demand in a decarbonized future, we are going to need to get electricity from here to here and probably not even need me to tell you why this is happening. be an uphill battle because as soon as you looked at that graph and realized that upgrading the grid was going to require a Princeton researcher to tell a farmer in the Midwest that we need to build something in your backyard so that someone in California can power your electric car that you already called The next eight election cycles for Republicans, but there's actually some good news because we've already made considerable progress in building renewable energy sources

last

year for the first time in history.

Renewable energies such as solar wind and hydroelectric power accounted for the majority of the new generation. capacity and that is good not only for consumers but in many cases for the communities where those facilities are built. In 2019, wind energy projects alone provided $706 million in land lease payments to rural landowners so cities and entire areas can benefit from the money and jobs renewables can generate, like this Wyoming mayor can attest, my personal belief is that it provides money, it provides employment taxes and then I look at the cities that they're in and I think about what people have that wouldn't have had a lot of infrastructure police cars that kind of thing when I look a wind farm all I think about is cha-ching and that's great, to be clear, when you look at a wind farm you can't think about ching because that's the cash register noise, I know you're trying to make a different point but this is also important.

Wind farms happen that's how wind farms work. A cash register is going to ching. A solar farm is going. A cat on the day everyone forgot his birthday. He meows. A horny cartoon. The wolf says ugh and again the wind farms work so that we are clear about how things are going, so that the physical generation of renewable energy is not really the problemHere, the key question is its transmission, basically, how do you get that energy from where it is? done like a wind farm in Wyoming to where it's needed, which could be a thousand miles away, and that brings us to the transmission lines because they are at the absolute heart of our grid and we're going to need a lot more of them, in part because Due to the limitations of our aging transmission infrastructure, in some places we have more electricity than we have the capacity to transport.

For example, in Vermont they had to impose a moratorium on new solar and wind projects because the transmission lines could not carry any more electricity. so building new lines of higher capacity is vitally important, but so far we have not done enough and that is due to a couple of reasons, the first important one being that the location of power lines throughout the country is a logistical nightmare, unlike interstate gas lines which only require approval from the federal energy regulatory commission with power lines must ensure acceptance by multiple state and local agencies in each state it passes through along with all individual property owners whose property you need to use and search for There are legitimate reasons for people not to want power lines in their backyard, for example if they disrupt their farming operations or run through environmentally sensitive areas or cultural or sacred sites for Native Americans, other objections are simply aesthetic , the fact is that high-voltage lines capable of carrying more electricity require larger towers than their predecessors and some people just don't want to see them.

This is such a problem that some countries have made efforts to beautify their towers in Hungary, they decided to build ones that look like jesters in Iceland, they proposed these designs for a project called land of giants and in Argentina there are colossal giant transmission line robots at night colossal lights up and can even smile and wink and look i get the smile part you want colossal to look friendly so kids won't be afraid of the giant electrified robot with glowing monster eyes but why need to wink? What are you trying to communicate? Is it approaching us?

Because I feel the same way about the colossal as I do about that dove, never in a million years, no thanks. please stop looking at me like that it makes me feel uncomfortable it's my friend's birthday we're just trying to give her a nice evening though I will I'll stick with the long island iced tea thank you and good night and the thing is the local opposition can be very effective in killing transmission line projects A few years ago, a company proposed plans to build 16 miles of new lines across Pennsylvania, but local property owners formed a grassroots group to reject even releasing videos like this to detail your objections.

I understand that everyone needs electricity and everyone has to have electricity. I wouldn't want to be without power, but from what I understand, you know this is only going to help people in western Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and what is it, you know? I mean, I chose to live here and they chose. live there, so don't make your problem my problem, that's how I feel okay, I mean, that's a little infuriating. Mirrored sunglasses definitely don't help, but it's much more than that because I understand I don't want to. This in my land I actually do, but to make your point, I don't want this here if it will only help someone there, it just makes you sound like an idiot.

Also, if we don't update the network, absolutely everyone will have problems. including you, it's like saying don't make your problem my problem when your neighbor's yard is full of bears, sure, but when I get over that fence, guess what your problem is now too and when you consider all the obstacles that projects transmission have to overcome, it is not surprising that it can take up to a decade for new projects to be approved, if they are approved at all, and this can make it more difficult to bring renewable energy to the grid in the first place, less than a quarter of the proposed energy projects, such as solar and wind.

In fact, we will ever reach commercial operation due to transmission obstacles and that is really not good. Now the second big obstacle to overcome here is the cost because the truth is that this will not be cheap. One study projects that decarbonizing our electrical grid could take two and a half years. trillions of dollars over the next decade and, to put it mildly, not everyone is on board with spending that money when Congress was considering the Clean Future Act, a bill that, among other things, would provide for the expansion of our broadcast, Rep. Bill Johnson flatly refused to entertain the idea. that could possibly be worth it and I wouldn't back down if the American people are stuck paying this bill, higher taxes or rate increases on their utility bills, can you honestly say that they will receive a return on their investment at measure they look? at the cost benefit for the health and safety of the communities what is the return on investment what is the return on investment they are making a monetary investment with their taxes or their rate increases what is the return on their investment then the return of investment is access to clean energy is access to no that's not a return on investment a return on investment is a monetary issue that's why you make an investment it's okay some things one shut up two if you let her talk for more than two seconds there I could have told you that many studies have found that it is profitable;

For example, a federal laboratory examined the expansion of transmission lines across the country and found that such a project could generate up to two dollars and fifty cents in benefits for every dollar of cost, which could be said to be a return. a return on an investment, aside from that, aside from the fact that blackouts can cost us a lot of money, as the people of Texas will tell you after what happened to them earlier this year, there are also many benefits here that are not purely monetary one cleaner grid helps combat climate change, which means maybe your grandchildren won't die in

week

ly lava hurricanes, which seems pretty valuable framing this purely as a matter of debt profits is so strange it's like saying which It's the return on investment in funding the fire department, how much money do we make from that?

Well, I guess technically none, but if your house is on fire, someone will come with a hose to put it out, plus we have those sexy firefighter calendars full of greased up bits of fire, so we have to be safer and hornier I'd call it. a win-win situation and look, I admit that this will require a lot of commitment and flexibility on the part of all of us, but there are ways to overcome the obstacles that I have described tonight when it comes to even the location of the transmission lines, we can alleviate people's concerns, not necessarily by going colossal and creepy here, we don't have to wink, but we can make sure people are fairly compensated for the use of their property and draw lines where possible. already disturbed terrain such as along railways and highways and when it comes to costs, we are finally making some progress.

The infrastructure bill that passed the House this

week

dedicates more than $65 billion to improving the electric grid, with some going directly to transmission improvements and expansion. It's a good start, although it's not enough, but the key in the future might be to start thinking about this differently than we currently do because for too long, when we've experienced blackouts, we've tended to think of it as the La grid is failing, but the truth is that it is not failing us, we are failing it by asking it to do something it was not designed to do in conditions it was not designed to do, so we must act boldly and quickly as if our lives and our shitty stews depend on it and if we do this, if we manage to properly upgrade our electrical grid, it will truly be one of the greatest achievements of the 21st century and definitely worth celebrating, maybe I don't know with some balloons You know, balloons are always fun, aren't they?

His lips are oh oh oh oh oh no oh uh uh wait, I'm fine, uh, that's our show. Thank you very much for watching, see you next week. Good good evening, thank you. That is. Which way is it? uh, I'm going to go, I'm going to go here look, it's over here we'll be back next week we'll be back we'll be back next week you