"We don't even notice power outages or public safety shut-offs anymore"
I don't notice these where I live, because they literally never happen. Are there really places in the first world in 2024 where blackouts still happen frequently?
"Frequently" is a bit subjective. This is one of those things where it might only happen in a specific area once every couple of years (for more than a few minutes or hours), but when it happens, it sticks around in people's memory -- usually because losing power is a great way to suddenly get a good look behind the facade of modern living.
Even people living in parts of California suffering under the reign of PG&E and their "power safety" shutoffs during potential fire events don't really experience prolonged, frequent outages, but they are a memorable nuisance (speaking as someone who lived in one of those areas).
That said, if you haven't experienced this yet, that's great, but it's likely that you will in the not-too-distant future. Power infrastructure almost everywhere is getting a bit wobbly for a couple of reasons: much of it is well beyond its originally designed lifetime, much of it hasn't been maintained as well as it should have been, and we are currently living through the disruptive effects of an increasingly unstable climate that have been predicted for decades. If your power comes from hydro, then freshwater ecosystems are experiencing deeper and longer drought cycles and the dam that provides that power is probably getting a bit old. If you live in a hurricane area, you're eventually going to get hit by a really bad one. If you live in an area that gets cold, you'll eventually get hit by a severe ice storm. If you live near a wooded area, it's going to burn. If you live deep in an urban setting and your power comes from a nuclear plant and everything has been well enough funded end-to-end to keep it in good working order, then congratulations, you probably won't experience any of these events directly.
But a lot of other people are, regardless of who they or their neighbors vote for.
I live in Boulder, Colorado. We had the Marshall Fire[1] a couple years ago, which burned down 1084 structures on a day with high winds. These winds are pretty normal around here on occasion, at least multiple times each year.
What's not normal is that last week, our utility (Xcel Energy) decided to preemptively shut off power to 55,000 customers to reduce risk before a forecasted wind event with high fire-risk[2]. They had intended to restore power the next day, but some went without power for a couple days.
The communication and execution of the shutdown seemed poor, and the infrastructure problems that led to the shutdown are still here. The impression I have from comments in local groups is that they are trying to avoid liability and have not adequately invested in fixing shoddy infrastructure that is going to be safe here. People are expecting regular shutoffs to become the new normal. Wind storms aren't going away, fixing the infrastructure would take a long time, and people don't think Xcel is interested in spending the money, even though they can likely afford to.
This has definitely left me thinking about a DIY battery+solar solution to keep my heating system running, as well as fridge/freezers.
I’m curious as to what the reasons for such regular shutoffs are. I’m now 24 years old and I cannot recall ever experiencing a power outage, ever. So either I’m extraordinarily lucky or they aren’t as common here
I live in rural CO, and we get them pretty regularly. Extreme weather is pretty common out here, and the infrastructure isn’t as redundant for the mountain communities (I assume due to the cost/benefit ratio of building new lines).
It’s not just power - we had a forest fire one year that burned a microwave tower & killed our cell phones _and_ internet for a week. The local businesses struggled for a day or two, because no one really carries cash anymore.
I should add that kind of like the OP, I added an enphase LiFePO4 house battery and panels. They’ll keep critical loads running basically indefinitely, which has been a welcome change. We have gas heat, but I used to get nervous in the winter when the power went out (our boiler requires electricity to run).
I live outside Seattle. We frequently get outages because trees fall on the lines. As most of where I live is glacier carved terrain, the soil conditions are very difficult for both undergrounding cables and for tree root establishment. When there is sustained heavy rains, the ground saturates, and if there are high winds afterwards, trees fall over.
I'm worse off than many, because I live on an island, and my electric service comes in across the water from a penisula. There's an awful lot of non-redundant paths through the penisula. On the island, there is no redundancy either, but there is a plan to create a ring between the three substations, which should help.
Most of my outages are only a few seconds. At the substation, they have reclosers [1], circuit breakers that will open when shorts or abnormal currents are detected, and then quickly reclose (thus the name) as many shorts are transient.
But when a tree falls on the line, that needs a truck rolled out to investigate, and often another one or two to repair. And conditions are similar across the area, so if one tree is on a line, there will be many. My local infrastructure is low priority because it serves few customers.
Ice storms are pretty nasty too, because then you've got potentially a lot more trees falling, and also hazardous road conditions that prevent or slow repair work.
When I lived in other places, power outages were much more rare. I would have never considered a whole house generator in those places, but I have one here and most of the houses I looked at had them. I would certainly install one if there wasn't one already.
I live in NJ in the US. The Emerald Ash Borer has decimated ash tree populations here, leaving millions of dead ash trees, many next to power lines. Electric companies are overwhelmed and slow to chop dead ones down.
Add in global warming bringing excessive intense rain storms to soften up the ground, and wind storms happening several times a year, and the result is we lose power at least once or twice a year. Some neighbors in very heavily wooded roads lose power 5+ times a year.
Not sure Spain can be considered a first world country but we small (5-10min) intermittent power outages in my neighborhood whenever there is sustained large amount of rain.
Funny enough, it seems to put the nearest cell phone antenas down as well as I can't even rely on tethering my mobile phone connection to work from home.
The private for-profit “utility” in California, PG&E, is extremely corrupt but voters can’t do anything about it because it’s a one-party state which means the only people that run for the opposition party are completely looney. Look up the history of the Paradise fire and “public safety power shutoffs”.
One party has nothing to do with itx it's more just standard PUC malfeasance and corruption which is endemic across the country. Ohio, for example, is anything but a one party state yet has legislators going to prison for being bribed by utilities to pass outrageous legislation.
Yes, much of the rural us east coast experiences a few a month. So many trees mean that even with continuous maintenance, odds are good that a storm or two a month will have an impact to at least some parts of any given service area.
Welcome to California, where the infrastructure is creaking and falling apart, power is unbelievably expensive, the housing is decrepit and eye-blistering expensive, and people just refuse to improve the system because they don't want more people to move here.
I had two 3 minute+ power drops yesterday. The local university lost power for 10+ hours, and scientists -80C freezers had to be emergency evacuated to other locations.
Calling California a “failed state” over this seems absurd when the most extreme example in recent history is the Texas freeze power outage in 2021 which left 4.5 million homes without power for several days during winter storms. Somewhere between 250-700 people died because of it.
It’s not the reason I call it a failed state but it does occur with more frequency than other states. It’s a matter of something that happens in an emergency vs ongoing issues.
Texas has the most number of outages in the last 20 years of all states, where an outage is defined by the DOE has a power failure affecting 50,000 people or more.
What is the reason, then, that California cannot be considered a first world state, and instead a failed state? And are there other states that used to have this designation, but have lost it in your view? Just curious.
Exploding deficits, tent cities, shit covered sidewalks, blackouts, palpable corruption, to name a few. No, I don’t think it’s limited to California, that state just kind of serves as a time machine for the rest of the country.
I don't notice these where I live, because they literally never happen. Are there really places in the first world in 2024 where blackouts still happen frequently?