Storms batter aging power grid as climate disasters spread
Shanghai wrestles with worsening food shortages under coronavirus shutdown
“Those really high-end nor’easters, the ones that take over CNN for days, those are going to occur with the same or increased frequency. Where these events occur could lead to increased vulnerability, because the infrastructure is not prepared.” Colin Zarzycki, Penn State University meteorology professor
Power outages from severe weather have doubled over the past two decades across the U.S., as a warming climate stirs more destructive storms that cripple broad segments of the nation’s aging electrical grid, according to an Associated Press analysis of government data.
Forty states are experiencing longer outages — and the problem is most acute in regions seeing more extreme weather, U.S. Department of Energy data shows. The blackouts can be harmful and even deadly for the elderly, disabled and other vulnerable communities.
Power grid maintenance expenses are skyrocketing as utilities upgrade decades-old transmission lines and equipment. And that means customers who are hit with more frequent and longer weather outages also are paying more for electricity.
“The electric grid is our early warning,” said University of California, Berkeley grid expert Alexandra von Meier. “Climate change is here, and we’re feeling real effects.”
The AP analysis found:
• The number of outages tied to severe weather rose from about 50 annually nationwide in the early 2000s to more than 100 annually on average over the past five years.
• The frequency and length of power failures are at their highest levels since reliability tracking began in 2013 — with U.S. customers on average experiencing more than eight hours of outages in 2020.
• Maine, Louisiana and California each experienced at least a 50% increase in outage duration even as residents endured mounting interruption costs over the past several years.
• In California alone, power losses have affected tens of thousands of people who rely on electricity for medical needs.
The AP analyzed electricity disturbance data submitted by utilities to the U.S. Department of Energy to identify weather-related outages. The analysis also examined utility-level data covering outages of more than five minutes, including how long they lasted and how often they occurred. Department officials declined comment.
Driving the increasingly commonplace blackouts are weather disasters now rolling across the country with seasonal consistency.
Winter storms called nor’easters barrel into New England and shred decrepit electrical networks. Hot summers spawn hurricanes that pound the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard, plunging communities into the dark, sometimes for months. And in fall, West Coast windstorms trigger forced power shutoffs across huge areas to protect against deadly wildfires from downed equipment.
MAINE
The power grid’s fragility hit home for Lynn Mason Courtney, 78, a blind cancer survivor living in a retirement community in Bethel, Maine, a rural town of 2,500 along the Androscoggin River.
When Courtney’s building lost power and heat for three days following a 2020 winter storm, the temperature inside fell to 42 degrees. Extended loss of heat isn’t something most people are prepared for in a cold state such as Maine, she said, and one resident relied on old camping gear to try to keep warm.
“I developed hypothermia. I was dehydrated,” Courtney said. “Two people on oxygen had nowhere to go. They just stayed in the apartment and hoped like hell that the power would come back on.”
Winter storms left more than 500,000 without power in Maine in 2017 — more than a third of the state’s population. And in recent years, the state has seen record numbers of weather-related interruptions. The state never recorded more than five per year until 2018, but in 2020 it had 12, AP’s analysis found.
As with much of the nation, Maine’s electrical infrastructure was built decades ago and parts are more than 50 years old, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The brittle condition of the state’s power grid and repeated disruptions worsened by climate change worry Courtney.
“When the power goes out, it’s extraordinarily difficult and dangerous,” she said. “If you’re disabled, it’s scary. You’re not safe.”
As the planet warms, storms that threaten power reliability are likely to hit some areas harder, said Penn State University meteorology professor Colin Zarzycki.
A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, increasing energy packed by storms no matter the season. The phenomenon produces, for example, increasingly destructive tropical hurricanes that strike the Southeast and Pacific storms that cause flooding on the West Coast.
On the East Coast, some nor’easters will convert to rainstorms as freezing weather shifts north. But those that fall as snow could be bigger than ever, Zarzycki said.
And some areas will get less snow but more sleet and freezing rain that can wreak greater damage on electrical systems, because ice-laden equipment is easier for winds to topple.
“Those really high-end nor’easters, the ones that take over CNN for days, those are going to occur with the same or increased frequency,” Zarzycki said. “Where these events occur could lead to increased vulnerability, because the infrastructure is not prepared.”
LOUISIANA
The combination of atrisk infrastructure and climate change can be deadly: After Hurricane Ida knocked out power to much of coastal Louisiana last year, heat killed or contributed to the deaths of at least 21 people, local coroners reported.
In New Orleans alone, heat caused nine deaths and contributed to 10 others, according to coroner’s office records. Most who died were elderly and African American. Spokesman Jason Melancon could not say which victims did not have power, but 75% of the city was still without power when most died.
David Sneed, 65, died in his wheelchair on the 12th-floor of the subsidized apartment where he’d been without power for several days after the storm hit Aug. 29.
Sneed was obese and had a cognitive impairment that made walking difficult, so he used the wheelchair most of
BEIJING — Residents of Shanghai are struggling to get meat, rice and other food supplies under anti-coronavirus controls that confine most of its 25 million people in their homes, fueling frustration as the government tries to contain a spreading outbreak.
People in China’s business capital complain online grocers often are sold out. Some received government food packages of meat and vegetables for a few days. But with no word on when they will be allowed out, anxiety is rising.
Zhang Yu, 33, said her household of eight eats three meals a day but has cut back to noodles for lunch. They received no government supplies.
“It’s not easy to keep this up,” said Zhang, who starts shopping online at 7 a.m.
“We read on the news there is (food), but we just can’t buy it,” she said. “As soon as you go to the grocery shopping app, it says today’s orders are filled.”
The complaints are an embarrassment for the ruling Communist Party during a politically sensitive year when President Xi Jinping is expected to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as leader.
Shanghai highlights the soaring human and economic cost of China’s “zero-covid” strategy that aims to isolate every infected person.
On Thursday, the government reported 23,107 new cases nationwide, all but 1,323 of which had no symptoms. That included 19,989 in Shanghai, where only 329 had symptoms.
Complaints about food shortages began after Shanghai closed segments of the city on March 28.
Plans called for four-day closures of districts while residents were tested. That changed to an indefinite citywide shutdown after case numbers soared. Shoppers who got little warning stripped supermarket shelves.
City officials apologized publicly last week and promised to improve food supplies.
Officials say Shanghai, home of the world’s busiest port and China’s main stock exchange, has enough food. But a deputy mayor, Chen Tong, acknowledged Thursday getting it the “last 100 meters” to households is a challenge.
“Shanghai’s battle against the epidemic has reached the most critical moment,” Chen said at a news conference, according to state media. He said officials “must go all out to get living supplies to the city’s 25 million people.”
At the same event, a vice president of Meituan, China’s biggest food delivery platform, blamed a shortage of staff and vehicles, according to a transcript released by the company. The executive, Mao Fang, said Meituan has moved automated delivery vehicles and nearly 1,000 extra employees to Shanghai.
Another online grocer, Dingdong, said it shifted 500 employees in Shanghai from other posts to making deliveries.
Li Xiaoliang, an employee of a courier company, complained the government overlooks people living in hotels. He said he is sharing a room with two coworkers after positive cases were found near his rented house.
Li, 30, said they brought instant noodles but those ran out. Now, they eat one meal a day of $6 lunch boxes ordered at the front desk, but the vendor sometimes doesn’t deliver. On Thursday, Li said he had only water all day.
The local government office “clearly said that they didn’t care about those staying in the hotel and left us to find our own way,” Li said. “What we need most now is supplies, food.”
After residents of a Shanghai apartment complex stood on their balconies to sing this week in a possible protest, a drone flew overhead and broadcast the message: “Control the soul’s desire for freedom and do not open the window to sing. This behavior has the risk of spreading the epidemic.”
The government says it is trying to reduce the impact of its tactics, but authorities still are enforcing curbs that also block access to the industrial cities of Changchun and Jilin with millions of residents in the northeast.
While the Shanghai port’s managers say operations are normal, the chair of the city’s chapter of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, Bettina Schoen-Behanzin, said its member companies estimate the volume of cargo handled has fallen 40%.
Some large factories and financial firms are having employees sleep at work to keep operating. But Schoen-Behanzin said with no timetable to end lockdowns, “some workers aren’t volunteering any more.”
Residents of smaller cities also have been confined temporarily to their homes this year as Chinese officials try to contain outbreaks.
In 2020, access to cities with a total of 60 million people was suspended in an unprecedented attempt to contain the outbreak. The ruling party organized vast supply networks to bring in food.
A resident of the Minhang district on Shanghai’s west side who asked to be identified only by her surname, Chen, said her household of five was given government food packages on March 30 and April 4.
They included chicken, eggplant, carrots, broccoli and potatoes.
Now, vegetables are available online, but meat, fish and eggs are hard to find, Chen said. She joined a neighborhood “buying club.” Minimum orders are $500, “so you need other people,” she said.
“Everyone is organizing to order food, because we can’t count on the government to send it to us,” Chen said. “They’re not reliable.”
A message from a viewer of an online news conference by the city’s health bureau challenged officials: “Put down the script! Please tell leaders to buy vegetables by mobile phone on the spot.”
Gregory Gao, an operations specialist for an automaker who lives alone in the downtown Yangpu district, said only Meituan remains after food sellers said supply sites in the area were closing.
“I can’t get anything for two or three days in a row,” said Gao, 29.
Zhang said some of her neighbors have run out of rice.
“The government told us at the beginning this would last four days,” she said. “Many people were not prepared.”
“We read on the news there is (food), but we just can’t buy it. As soon as you go to the grocery shopping app, it says today’s orders are filled.” — Zhang Yu, Shanghai resident