What Next TBD: America’s $5 Trillion Grid Problem

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

To keep places like Phoenix habitable, we need to have air-conditioning. But to have air-conditioning, we need a functional, modern electrical grid. With America’s grid already aging—and more demand coming in the form of electric cars and more A/C for hotter weather—what will it take to keep it going as the weather gets more extreme? Guest: Dr. Joshua Rhodes, research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin studying energy systems and how they interact with our environment, climate, and life. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next TBD. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I made you think you was real.
0:02.0	My name is Caden Sinclair.
0:04.0	Some people call us American royalty.
0:06.0	We were Liars.
0:08.0	A new series on Prime Video.
0:10.0	We were happy. We wanted for nothing.
0:12.0	Based on the best-selling novel.
0:15.0	Something terrible happened last summer,
0:17.0	and I have no memory of what or who hurt me.
0:20.0	No one in my family will tell me. When you're
0:23.0	left for dead, you want answers. We will liars. New series, watch now, only on Prime Video.
0:33.6	When you open up your weather app and see a forecast for 85, 90, even 99 degrees, you brace yourself for a hot day outside.
0:46.0	But for some in Arizona, living through a record-breaking heat wave without air conditioning, that's the temperature inside their homes.
0:53.5	Just after lunchtime and temperatures reaching 85 degrees inside Paulette Hamilton's apartment unit,
1:00.7	she says it went out Thursday evening.
1:03.2	Five days is a long time to go without no air when it's over 100 some degrees.
1:08.1	We're getting the temperature of the wall. It's around 98 to 99 degrees.
1:12.6	This is what Hope McNally has been living in for the past two months.
1:16.6	Now she is hoping that she gets some cool air.
1:19.6	It's miserable.
1:21.6	It is miserable in here.
1:24.6	Earlier this week, Phoenix hit 19 straight days of temperatures clocking in at 110 degrees
	...

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