Practices such as redlining left marginalized groups in more disaster-prone areas with poorer quality infrastructure − and more likely to experience prolonged power outages.
Utilities can turn off power to reduce the risk that their equipment could spark wildfires during extreme weather events.
Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images
Turning off power is a last-ditch strategy for utilities to reduce the risk that their systems could spark wildfires. In most states, deciding whether to take that step is up to utilities.
Low-income communities often have a longer wait for electricity to come back after outages.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
Texas wasn’t prepared to keep the lights on during Winter Storm Uri, and it won’t be ready for future cold weather unless it starts thinking about energy demand as well as supply.
Security companies suggest that criminals take advantage of the fact that many home and business security systems get compromised during power outages.
A Long Island Power Authority smart meter installed at a home in Suffolk County, N.Y.
John Paraskevas/Newsday RM via Getty Images
Most households pay a flat rate 24/7 for electricity although the cost of generating it fluctuates through the day. Wireless technologies are changing that system.
Downed powerlines can mean weeks without power.
AP Photo/Matt Slocum
Will Gorman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Bentham Paulos, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Galen Barbose, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
A study of real-world disasters shows home solar and storage could keep the lights on and the air conditioner running during many outages, but not all.
A worker cuts an electricity pole downed by Hurricane Fiona in Cayey, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 18, 2022.
AP Photo/Stephanie Roja
Hurricane Fiona will set back efforts to restore Puerto Rico that date back five years to Hurricane Maria. Two scholars explain how the island’s weak institutions worsen the impacts of disasters.
A satellite image shows how vast the remnants of Typhoon Merbok were as the storm hit the Alaska coast.
National Weather Service
Most of the flooded communities are Indigenous and rely on subsistence hunting that residents would normally be doing right now. Recovering from the damage will make that harder.
Volunteers distributed bottled water after Jackson, Mississippi’s water treatment plant failed during flooding in August 2022.
Brad Vest/Getty Images
A heat wave that pushed California’s power grid to the limit, and the water system failure in Jackson, Mississippi, are just two examples.
The control room of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the flow of electricity on the state’s power grid.
Rolf Schulten/ullstein bild via Getty Images
Sometimes wind and solar power produce more electricity than the local grid can handle. Better energy storage and transmission could move extra energy to where it’s needed instead of shutting it off.
Think of your car as a home power supply on wheels.
Tesson/Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Bidirectional charging is the next big stage for electric vehicles. But storing power in your car and sending it back to your house involves more than flipping a switch.
Motorists drive at night on a road without street light as Nigeria struggles with power outages in a commercial district of Lagos.
Photo by PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP via Getty Images
Building even more power poles and transmission lines won’t avert outages when major disasters strike.
Outages left downtown New Orleans in the dark after Hurricane Ida made landfall on Aug. 29, 2021.
Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Hurricane Ida left the entire city of New Orleans in the dark and renewed discussion of burying power lines. But there’s no way to completely protect the grid, above ground or below.
Electric service trucks line up after a snow storm in Fort Worth, Texas, on Feb. 16, 2021.
Ron Jenkins/Getty Images
Jeanie Chin, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
In an era of climate change and extreme weather, a microgrid — a self-sufficient, energy-generating distribution and control system — puts communities on the path to self-reliance.
Venezuelans have faced food and medicine shortages since late 2015. Now power outages have cut off water supplies, too.
AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko
As rival factions vie for control over Venezuela, many of the country’s 31 million people are suffering prolonged power outages, food and water shortages, and limited access to medicine.