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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, short wavers.

So a lot of you might know this, but if you're going to tackle climate change, we have to stop relying on fossil fuels.

And if we're going to stop relying on fossil fuels, we're going to have to start using a lot more renewable energy.

And in order to switch over to renewable energy, we're going to need to electrify everything.

Which is great, electrification can create a lot of efficiency and a lot of jobs.

But as anyone who has experienced a blackout can tell you, the electrical grid is not perfect.

So a key part of a successful electrification will be solving the problem of power outages.

Because get this, one in every four households experiences a power outage annually.

That's why today I'm talking to Peter Fior.

He's an electrical engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

He lives in Fort White, Florida, and he's experienced his share of power outages, like Hurricane

Helene back in September.

Helene was a massive storm, and she came ashore about 40 miles away from where we live.

So at our place, our winds topped out at about 90 miles an hour, and we had trees that fell

and all sorts of stuff like that. But why stop there? Because two weeks later, here comes Milton.

Here it was piles and piles and piles of furniture and mattresses and blown out buildings and

everything like that. This past hurricane season, Peter and his wife lost power for days.

We're without power for quite a while.

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