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This and other damage to the power system left more than a million customers without power in the wake of the storm and in the wider region, which was plagued by swelteringly high temperatures. The main utility Entergy New Orleans said that it can take weeks to fully restore the service.

Ida is following record-breaking heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest in June as rising electricity demands are cutting power in some areas and forcing utilities to work. institute of cuts To avoid worse problems. That followed closely the blackouts in Texas, which left four million without power for days in February as cold temperatures created a spike in demand and froze. natural gas wells and collection lines.

Finally, in California, utilities began shutting down power lines in hopes of preventing a broken line from sparking another deadly hell like the Campfire, as high winds and fire risks escalated. Nearly destroyed paradise town.

Each of these disasters, exacerbated or made more likely Climate change has undermined our electricity systems in different ways: creating demand spikes, shutting down power plants and shutting down transmission lines.

Every problem requires different, expensive solutions. But they all point to the same problem: the growing need to build a modern, robust, interconnected power generation and distribution system that can keep the lights on in the face of severe extreme weather events.

Losing strength during heat waves, winter storms, floods and fires is not just an inconvenience. It is very often a matter of life and death.

We need to weather-proof power plants so that they can operate safely in both scorching and freezing conditions. We need to update networks with sensors and software that help operators predict and prevent problems.

To ensure that there is enough power to keep homes and businesses online whatever the weather, we need to develop a wider variety of electricity sources, as well as store much more energy. We need to connect our creaking, fragmented systems to create more redundancy at our power plants and the towers and lines that supply electricity wherever it needs to go.