How the surging demand for energy and rise of AI is straining the power grid in the U.S.

CBS News ^ | July 19, 2024 | Ben Tracy

[jmacusa]

You don’t think letting in 13 million illegal aliens wouldn’t have anything to do with it, do you?

[oldtech]

Someone might explain to me why we need EVs or AI when the power grid will hardly handle what we’ve got. Where I live (small town) we have more & more short term power blackouts with no explanations as a rule. I have to wonder if the grid is going down because someone thinks they need power elsewhere for EVs or whatever. Sorry, I don’t accept that as a reasonable excuse( we have only a very few EVs here) for cutting off my power. Some stuff in my house has to be reset & I was here before EVs & AI. Hard to say what this does to any electric motors that have to restart automatically. Is the power company going to replace these when the time comes along with accompanying expenses? This would be mainly a refririgerator, deep freeze, & A/C unit. Multiply those numbers for that equipment by the number of units affected & it would be sizeable.

[oldtech]

I might add that we had a power disruption last winter here that was quite noticeable in it’s length. It was cold & if you were most folks, that meant no heat. As I recall, it lasted several hours. Did we get a reduced rate that month for the considerable inconvenience? Yeah, sure. You bet.

[blackdog]

There is political action, and there is the right thing to do, action. Engineering only works with the second of the two. If you choose the first, things go to $hit rather quickly.