Good morning.
America’s power grid is a patchwork of more than 12,500 power plants in varying stages of health that generate electricity through coal, natural gas, petroleum, hydroelectric power, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and nuclear energy. That power is distributed through anywhere from 160,000 to more than 642,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines—the range of official estimates could make a journalist cry—and let’s just say several million miles of local distribution lines.
What we do know is that fallen and damaged lines are a major source of deadly wildfires—from the 2018 ‘Camp Fire’ in California caused by PG&E to last year’s tragedy in Lahaina, Maui that was caused, in part, by Hawaiian Electric Co. That’s put a lot of pressure on utilities to address those risks at a time when demand on the grid is soaring, thanks to electric vehicles, data centers, and the power demands of a warming planet.
