r/Economics • u/One-Emu-1103 • 1d ago
Alarm as Trump admin invokes emergency powers ‘to mitigate blackout risks’
https://www.rawstory.com/blackouts/1.2k
u/Visual-Hunter-1010 1d ago
In a statement, Wright took an indirect shot at the Biden administration’s energy policies and renewable energy resources while praising the Trump administration’s own energy policies.
“While past leaders’ energy subtraction policies have made the grid more vulnerable to the risk of blackouts when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, this administration remains committed to using every available tool to prevent blackouts,” Wright said.
I wish these clowns realized what they sound like...
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u/mediocre_remnants 1d ago
Oh, they know that what they're saying is bullshit. Their idiotic voting base does not, though.
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u/wbruce098 1d ago
Their idiotic voting base is slowly realizing that groceries are nearly unaffordable now, just in time for the midterms, so there’s that…
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u/Brewbouy 1d ago
They're still going to vote for R all the way down the ballot.
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u/wbruce098 1d ago
Or stay home and decide that it’s just not worth it. Either way, it’s still important for sane, informed people to vote. I dropped my ballot off yesterday!
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u/RainbowDarter 16h ago
"Imagine how much worse it would be with a Democrat as president"
Literally the response I've seen
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u/Plus-Ad-940 1d ago
It’s as much thought they put into their R selections as it was thought that they put into their own lives… randomness.
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u/tstorm004 1d ago
And too many of them are still blaming Obama or Biden
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u/pheonix080 1d ago
I can’t wrap my head around that one. Dudes been at the helm for two years and somehow it’s Bidens fault?!
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u/wbruce098 1d ago
Why did Obama make groceries in 2026 so expensive???
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u/KarmaticArmageddon 1d ago
I'm not surprised. Did you know he wasn't even in the Oval Office during 9/11? What kind of leader does that?!
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 13h ago
Obama has been gone for nearly 10 years now and inflation was below 2% for his entire term.
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u/Comfortable-Sun3200 1d ago
no they are. what i've heard from most of the die hard right wingers that i know is "i'm not voting blue but i can't support this admin so ill just sit this election cycle out." so really if thats true on a wider approach, people just need to actually show up.
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u/judgejuddhirsch 1d ago
"the team that made bad choices really hurt me, but I'm not ready to vote for the team that promised to help instead"
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u/Comfortable-Sun3200 1d ago
yeah, pride is the reason most ppl in this country suffer. its the same reason why most ppl wont admit they aren't middle class and start demanding change.
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u/ThatIrishChEg 1d ago
It's easy to get exhausted when even team blue is corporatist. For example, the new "airlines don't have to give stranded passengers hotels and food for way more reasons" law that recently went into effect was signed by Papa Joe. I just want a trust buster, man.
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u/xiiicrowns 1d ago
Either a distraction to ongoing shit or shifting blame for future shit if the grid fails on them
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u/isopropyl-elmer 1d ago
Yep. Their words aren't for you or me. If you or I were to drop dead in front of any one of them they'd simply step over our corpse and go on with their day. Their words are for the drooling, behatted magats, who are extremely easy to distract, steer and control.
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u/ThrasymachianJustice 1d ago
this administration remains committed to using every available tool to prevent blackouts
didn't they spend a ton of money eliminating wind turbines?
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u/aircavrocker 1d ago
And energy efficiency programs that would reduce additional strain on the system
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u/Ghoulius-Caesar 1d ago
Do they just expect us to be so dumb that we don’t know that battery’s exist that can store energy when the “wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining”?
Ohh right, they do expect us to be that dumb…
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u/214ObstructedReverie 1d ago
Ohh right, they do expect us to be that dumb…
The American electorate isn't exactly doing anything to disprove them.
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u/hotpuck6 1d ago
Amazing that in a time where there is higher power demand than ever before, driving higher energy prices, somehow the stupids can't figure out that any additional supply is a good thing. State media has them convinced it's one or the other, can't possibly have both.
Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
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u/South-Arachnid2961 1d ago
But it’s not just batteries. The entire power grid is vulnerable and aging. The Republicans have done nothing to improve basic infrastructure in this country, and that is the greater danger.
And what is this, emergency #525,600?
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u/kaplanfx 23h ago
The capital owner will extract every dollar of value out of the grid, and when it finally collapses the tax payers will all be on the hook to bail it out.
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u/HawgChuggins 21h ago
Only for them to come swooping in with promises of saving the public money with privatization.
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u/Flyen 1d ago
or imagine there were a way to get electricity to one place where the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining from another where it is
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u/ether_reddit 1d ago
That might involve trading with other states or (gasp!) even Canada, and we can't possibly have that...
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u/codefame 1d ago
Anyone else find it weird that the sun always shines and wind always blows in China? Like what do they have that we don’t?
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u/Worthyness 1d ago
turns out you can have both in addition to all the other energy generation like nuclear. Redundancy is better than relying solely on one type.
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u/Ghoulius-Caesar 1d ago edited 1d ago
Relying on one type helps oil company profits…. and so does closing the Straight of Hormuz… well certain companies from a certain country benefit from that… ohhh I see why the “drill baby drill” Guy wants to keep his country dependent on oil…
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u/kaplanfx 23h ago
See, they have a government that can tell the fossil fuel owners/producers to fuck off, whereas in the west we have fossil fuel owners/producers who can tell the government to fuck off.
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u/Evening_Application2 11h ago
Chairman Xi holds the Mandate of Heaven, while President Trump does not. Simple as
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u/Noblesseux 1d ago
Their voters are that dumb, which is what matters. They're not talking to us, they're talking to them.
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u/lolexecs 1d ago
And of course, don't tell anyone that it's now cheaper to boot
The levelized cost of electricity for four-hour battery storage is now cheaper than gas peakers in markets across the globe, according to a Wood Mackenzie analysis published Thursday.
Also, there are pretty nifty things like VPPs (supply side aggregation) that are also plugging the gap.
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u/venuswasaflytrap 20h ago
I used to work for a solar power company. Storage on the grid is very rare and difficult and quite a new technology. Yes batteries exist, but the scale to store, say, a city's amount of power overnight such that a solar power plant could power a city overnight does not yet exist. It may be possible at this point with widely decentralised batteries - i.e. if everyone had an at-home battery system - but there's no power plant sized battery that is widely in use yet.
Obviously, the more obvious point is that the whole reason there's a power crisis is because political choices made access to fossil fuels precarious, and that it would have been better if the US has invested more heavily in renewables more to supplement this. But I just wanted to point out the fact that currently the way power grids work power pretty much must be made "on demand" and there's no large scale way to save up a ton of solar in the day.
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u/salutava_sempre 15h ago
> there's no large scale way to save up a ton of solar in the day
Pumped-storage hydroelectric plants serve precisely this purpose.
They have limitations (like all batteries), but they do this.2
u/venuswasaflytrap 15h ago
Yeah, I wasn't aware this was so prevalent in norway. My familiarity is largely with the UK power grid, and I know that there isn't very much storage on the grid.
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u/salutava_sempre 15h ago
Here in Italy, too.
Italy has no nuclear power plants; as far as I know, it buys electricity from France at a low price during the night to use the following day. Obviously, it doesn't cover 100% of the demand, but it helps.
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u/RedRabbit720 19h ago
In Norway they use basically sand heated up by wind and solar in the summer, then the heat is released into the homes of the city when needed in the winter.
There’s even a video about it you can look up
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u/venuswasaflytrap 19h ago
That represents a very small fraction of Norway's power supply. One of these sand battery's stores about 100MWh. Norway's uses about 350,000MWh a day, so that should give you a sense of the scale.
However, I'm just reading now that Norway seems to use a ton of pumped hydro storage, i.e. they pump water into reservoirs when they have extra power and then use it when they need it. They seem to have 87,000,000 MWh of pumped Hydro storage, so that's actually feasible.
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u/keyboard_pilot 15h ago
I'm glad you brought this up because I was about to reply ripping into your "solar power company experience" regarding storage because since fucking forever we've been really good at pumped hydro energy storage
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u/madmax177 19h ago
Sand stays hot for that long?
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u/devliegende 12h ago
It's the basic principle behind geothermal heating and cooling. A few meters down the ground temperature stays pretty much constant year round. You can pump heat down there in summer and extract it back up in winter.
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u/ApartmentSalt7859 14h ago
No, it was just a lot warmer in fall than normal, when power grid is scheduled for maintenance at the same time people fire up their air conditioning.....hmm why is it so warm in October....I wonder...🤔
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u/devliegende 12h ago
It doesn't need to be centralized though. In fact the closer the battery packs are to the end users the more efficient they will be.
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u/Automatic_Taste_7242 1d ago
Not us, just the dipshits that believe whatever they say, anytime the subject of renewables comes us, with certain family members, all i hear from them is global warming is fake and that renewable(wind and solar) are a scam
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u/Ranccor 1d ago
Well, if it in nuclear winter and the sun never shines again, what are your solar panels gonna do then?!! Checkmate, liberal.
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u/Wayniac666 11h ago
There's no viable Mass Deployable and correctly sized solution to store grid energy. I worked for a superconductivity company attempting to develop just that. The fact is that if you want power for everybody all the time, you need to get it while it's being generated there is no let's hold it for a little while and then use it later solution, at least not grid size there isn't... not including your leaf blower, UPSs, cellular tracking/advertising devices and other minor items like that
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u/Clean_Brilliant_8586 1d ago
"While past leaders’ energy subtraction policies have made the grid more vulnerable to the risk of blackouts when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow ..."
... Or the oil doesn't flow.
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 1d ago
Wright is responsible for the lack of capacity expansion that he is now complaining about.
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u/DiamondHandsToUranus 1d ago
Yes, but if they don't break things how can they expect to sell themselves as the solution?
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u/CountryFriedSteak878 1d ago
Remind me again of how many times Biden had to invoke emergency powers to prevent blackouts?
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u/Sorry_Exercise_9603 1d ago
Every tool except batteries.
Why did we have to get saddled with these ass clowns? Oh right, getting trans out of women’s sports. All four of them.
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u/dyrnwyn580 1d ago
I feel like a lot was lost now that people don’t see daily comics in the newspaper.
I picture Uncle Sam riding a donkey. While China passes us in a roadster with a wave from the window.
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u/Egad86 1d ago
For real, but what’s worse is that a significant portion of the population don’t hear it either.
Imagine telling someone that if they had more than one source of money they would be more likely to go broke, and they were like, “makes total sense, I’m going to tell all my friends so they don’t fall for that trick!”
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u/AmericanScream 1d ago
I was going to make a joke like, "I guess this is Biden's fault...."
/facepalm
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u/Pezdrake 1d ago
They aren't trying to sound like anything. They are trying to put up the minimal foundation to justify future violations.
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u/WillieM96 1d ago
They are intentionally sounding like this. They want everyone to know in no uncertain terms that facts are irrelevant to them and they cannot be reasoned with. The goal is to make anyone who decides to fight back feel discouraged because the normal tools rational, civilized people use (logic and reason) have no impact on them whatsoever.
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u/slaty_balls 1d ago
So is that how they’re coming to interfere with the midterms? Attacking our own grid?
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u/WanderingMind2432 1d ago
They know how dumb they sound, but they only need to say what they need to say to 30% of their voter base. Unfortunately there's no consequences anymore.
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u/tiny_chaotic_evil 23h ago
they are talking to idiots far dumber than you may be able to believe in
their message is not intended for you.
and they will vote for him even if he actually physically destroys the Country
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u/One-Emu-1103 1d ago
Issued by Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday, the emergency order goes into effect starting Tuesday and authorizes PJM Interconnection — a regional electricity grid operator — to direct backup generation resources “as a last resort,” among other measures designed to avoid energy blackouts. The order will be in effect through Friday.
Baumgartner suspected the emergency order was issued due to the enormous energy requirements of AI data centers, with the Mid-Atlantic being home to well over 1,000 such facilities. The energy demand for some AI data centers is equivalent, according to the International Energy Agency, to the “annual electricity consumption of 100,000 households.”
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u/ActualSpiders 1d ago
I wonder what Texas thinks about this...
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u/tonycomputerguy 1d ago
Texas thinking about stuff? Well shit... I guess there's a first time for everything...
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u/Eastern_Labrat 1d ago
100,000 households isn’t as big as I thought. With 1000 data centers the math is 100 houses/data center. Or am I missing something?
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u/farcemajeure1 1d ago
"The energy demand of some data centers is equivalent to annual consumption of 100k households" If I'm reading this correctly I think they are saying that a single data center can use up to 100k households worth of energy, not all of them collectively
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u/TheBlats 1d ago
You are correct.
Some rich assholes in town are trying to build a 3.3gw campus with its own natural gas power plant and 3 datacenters. It's estimated those 3 datacenters will use as much energy as 300,000+ households (100,000 per).
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u/Fr1toBand1to 1d ago
They use so much power that Google is building 1.8GW of nuclear power.
Fossil fuels for us, clean nuclear for the AI.
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u/AmericanWastelander 1d ago
I think that’s some DCs are alone the equivalent of 100,000 homes energy use
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u/SethiusAlpha 1d ago
You (and they) are missing the "each" part. Some centers use the same as 100k households each.
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u/tellmewhenimlying 1d ago
Exactly. Let's say there are approximately 1,100 data centers given that the Mid-Atlantic is home "to well over 1,000 such facilities", and because the energy demand for some AI data centers is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 100,000 households, that each data center actually averages the annual equivalent of 50,000 households. That would mean that the mid-Atlantic data centers total annual electricity consumption would be the equivalent of 55 million additional households.
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u/Lost-Platypus8271 1d ago
per data center
reading comprehension seems to be dropping as AI use increases in our society smh* *
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u/Canuck9876 1d ago
No - 100,000 households each. So 100,000 x 1,000 data centers. A hundred million goddam households.
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u/seventysevensevens 1d ago
If this admin didn't hate solar and batteries, I could be in a better position to get my house set up with battery backup but alas, lets cut those programs for... wokeness?
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u/Yagoua81 1d ago
Cut alternative energy and bomb the shit out of a country who controls the trade routes which oil flows, profit?
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u/JeepStang 1d ago
PROFIT!!!!!!!!
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u/Boozeburger 1d ago
He's made Billions!!! The rest of the country not so much.
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u/Worthyness 1d ago
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make!"
- This entire administration
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u/YouFoundMyLuckyCharm 1d ago
They hate Green because it isn’t Red. In other news, we’ve got a new arrangement with Russian oil apparently.
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u/ariukidding 1d ago
They gutted those ‘hand outs’ like everything else so Americans can afford giving Elon and friends a nice tax break. They didn’t lie, their America is great. The idiots that voted them though, are staring at the greatness behind a fence looking in.
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u/ATDT_No-Carrier 1d ago
If only there was a way to forecast in advance, the electrical requirements of all of these facilities as construction completed... Something like, simple mathematics and proper planning.
Ohh, that's right... The GOP doesn't believe in such things...
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u/DiamondHandsToUranus 1d ago
They need bot farms to control the narrative via social media more than they care if people live or die.
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u/Ateist 1d ago
The problem is that you have a sudden heat wave
Unseasonable Heat Blast: Forecasters noted temperatures suddenly jumping into the 70s and 80s across the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic, prompting millions of residents to turn back on air conditioners and fans
together with
Autumn Maintenance Season: The grid was already operating with reduced capacity because multiple power plants and critical transmission lines had been intentionally powered down for scheduled seasonal repairs
So, basically peak demand with significantly reduced capacity.
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u/PaulMakesThings1 1d ago
Now this is probably a bit of a leap, but is he possibly taking his emergency powers for a walk to see how far he can push them before he uses them more heavily on election day?
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u/Unique-Egg-461 1d ago
I mean it is this admin so nothing is out of bounce or beyond the pale for them.
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u/MyCassadaga 1d ago
Solar? What are you … gay? /s
These corrupt petro-dollar chasing, filthy republicans set us back 20 years with their culture war on technological progress. Even ai… Trump acts like he’s the big champion of Ai … guess what we need to achieve true AGI or ASI? ELECTRICITY. A LOT MORE OF IT. which means what? More coal? Gonna burn more goal?
Imagine when the super intelligence comes online and destroys itself after learning we’re literally burning the planet to death just to get enough juice to say we “won” while also shitting in everything else that keeps us progressing as a species.
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u/Mr_BriteMighty 1d ago
Speculation here - they need more energy for our data centers right after the Russian ones were destroyed and the GOP no longer has the Bots that spread their propaganda and they GOP need to use our data centers to spread their nonsense and bullshit
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u/hamellr 16h ago
While a good thought, luckily no. The Bot data centers are racks and racks of iPhones with a controller attached per every 100 or so. IG and social media platforms reward traffic to iPhone posters (usually the newest ones of course)
Most data centers are servers and crap loads of hard drives configured to serve data not run phone banks.
It would be very difficult to turn a data center into a botnet. And if you did using existing hardware it wouldn’t have much authority for the algorithms.
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u/FlyingBishop 1d ago
this administration remains committed to using every available tool to prevent blackouts
Yes, if by "committed to using every available tool" you mean, paying hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent new power plants from coming online. If we just went full-tilt on batteries/solar/wind these problems would legitimately go away. Instead the administration is deliberately sabotaging all the power plants they don't like.
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u/disposition5 1d ago
Blackout issues during the mildest part of the year? What are things going to look like when it gets cold and folks actually start using hvac / electricity?
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u/Slazik 1d ago
The power plants are scheduled to be shut down in milder weather for maintenance or refueling. That can cause some problems if there are unexpected outages of the plants that are supposed to be online. When load is expected to be huge the plants should have all their maintenance complete and be ready to go. So mild weather can be a vulnerable time for blackouts.
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u/Wild-Ability-7827 1d ago
Texas gets almost 25% of its power from wind. Why doesn’t anyone ask Trump why Greg Abbott is giving all of those people cancer from windmills?
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 1d ago
"Similar emergency orders had been granted by the Department of Energy multiple times this year, the spokesperson added."
Not something new.
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u/seldom_r 1d ago
Those other times were during the summer heat waves, which the mid-atlantic is not now experiencing. It is curious what forecast they are using that is predicting higher energy demand than summer heat.
The order says that PJM can cut service to data centers or others that have their own backup generator capability, which is a good thing so normal service isn't impacted. But how is there such extraordinary demand projected seems to be the question.
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u/Ok-Crow-4948 14h ago
So what is causing or has the potential to cause the blackouts? It's not crazy hot or cold. Why is there a sudden demand for energy? Data Centers?
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u/JetJaguarYouthClub 11h ago
Combination of it being unseasonably warm, and this being the time power plants do their fall maintenance prepping for winter
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u/marshmallowcthulhu 3h ago
There’s a reduced supply. At this time of year, when demand typically lowers, the power companies schedule and perform a lot of maintenance that takes power plant and grid infrastructure partially down. This reduces supply.
Normally the reduced supply is fine. Currently the weather is warmer than expected and the demand is therefore higher than expected.
But that’s not enough to account for the issue. If it was then we would have seen similar problems in the past. It’s real, but I suspect that the clincher is data centers.
So: Supply lowered, demand didn’t lower as much as expected, weather is partly to blame, but data centers are probably a big factor.
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u/DonnyMox 1d ago
VOTE BLUE! Remember that it needs to be TOO BIG TO RIG! NO COMPLACENCY! We must save our country from the MAGA menace! Our future depends on this election!
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u/redheadedandbold 1d ago
The total lack of leadership from these bumbling old men is mind-boggling. Their only purpose is to bilk the rich and the government of as much as they can before their term ends. The needs of 330 million Americans are invisible to these common thieves in suits.
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u/gumboking 1d ago
Get your generators gassed up. He's going to try a little chaos via blackouts. Stock the freezer too and lay in canned/shelf stable food and don't forget water. Lets make it through January 3rd. Remember that this guy telegraphs everything he is going to do like a Bond Supervillain. Remember when he told us how Musk was going to help him get elected by working his magic? He really does tell us before he does all this nasty stuff.
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u/thatonefrickindude 19h ago
Solar generators, easy and efficient these days.
Never runs out of you build it right.
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u/dasvikingmon 1d ago
Pretty sure I saw something about the energy insurance auction this year run out as opposed to just riding at the max capped price the last few years. New energy environment is like a starving glutton. Good luck this winter y'all make sure to take your HVAC seriously, a little maintenance saves you a bit of money long term.
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u/concerts85701 13h ago
What page is this in the Project 2025 manual?
Create need for emergency powers to take control of energy resources, use that a precedent to take control of other utilities and then put them all under state control - for national security reasons.
All for the tech oligarchs to siphon off for their data centers and eventually their sovereign tech-cities.
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u/Vortex295 12h ago
You mean how they were publicly owned before the Regan years?
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u/concerts85701 12h ago
Were they hostilely taken over? And when did de-regulation and private sector competition become the enemy? Oh yeah when tech oligarchs came to power.
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u/Vortex295 11h ago
You’re right, it certainly wasn’t when entire regions of the country had single monopolies that controlled electrical, water, and gas and were privately held and not accountable to the citizenry of which they serve
It certainly wasn’t on cost cutting on maintenance for electrical infrastructure sparked several wildfires in California, or when it was determined to be more profitable to not winterize the electrical and gas infrastructure in Texas.
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