September 13, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.The article documents the damage that occurs when a large city is without energy during a period of extreme heat. That is something that the NYISO has been warning about for downstate NY.
By increasing loads while trying to eliminate generation, combined with fantasizing about renewable generation that isn’t coming nearly fast enough if ever, NY City with NY State being complicit are creating their own self inflicted disaster.
While the article focuses on heat and a lack of power, NY City could experience both a health issue in the summer and an even larger health issue in the winter within a few years as they mandate building electrification with inadequate resources providing the energy to support that effort.
The NYISO has been silently screaming about the potential utility failures as it relates to heat over the next few years.
NY City is not prepared for it both for structural reasons and because their leadership is oblivious to the problem and is stuck in a bubble reinforcing a worldview that is not supported by math and physics.
R. Ellenbogen
The disaster no major U.S. city is prepared for
Washington Post, By Niko Kommenda, Shannon Osaka and Simon Ducroquet
September 13, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.
For days, residents of Houston struggled to survive as temperatures rose. They shared generators, filled buckets and bathtubs with ice, packed air-conditioned hotels and emergency rooms. The most vulnerable struggled to get the care they needed. Many died.
But in some ways, Houston was narrowly spared. Temperatures rose to the high 90s, but only for a couple of days. If the heat had stayed, the human toll could have been far worse.
Experts warn this type of catastrophe — a combined power outage with a heat wave — is a scenario that cities and states are unprepared for.
“I don’t think it’s likely — I think it’s an absolute certainty,” said Brian Stone, a professor and director of the Urban Climate Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “I think it’s an absolute certainty that we will have an extreme heat wave and an extended blackout in the United States.”
The Washington Post analyzed the risks of a prolonged, citywide blackout coinciding with a more severe heat wave. The results show that such a heat wave could kill between 600 and 1,500 people in the Houston metro area over five days. With the power grid working normally, the same heat wave would lead to around 50 deaths.