Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: One morning last June in Waltham, Massachusetts, a town just
Speaker 2: outside Boston, a bunch of fire alarms started going off.
Speaker 1: So all these neighbors and their pajamas got out and
Speaker 1: were like, what's happening, And then they also noticed that
Speaker 1: there was a fire and they were losing electricity too.
Speaker 2: This is Neurine Malik, a Bloomberg Power and Energy reporter.
Speaker 2: A house had caught fire and local firefighters responded to
Speaker 2: the scene. The neighbors would later learn that this fire
Speaker 2: and the loss of electricity started because of a problem
Speaker 2: with the power grid. There was a power surge.
Speaker 1: Higher voltage like rippled through neighborhoods and some houses. Every
Speaker 1: house experienced it differently. Some had flickering lights, some had
Speaker 1: actual like their own power surges within their homes and
Speaker 1: their own electrical appliances got fried. People had refrigerators, air conditioners,
Speaker 1: and of course, unfortunately for this one family, they're home
Speaker 1: caught fire and it was devastating.
Speaker 2: And Noreene says Waltham is not the only neighborhood at risk.
Speaker 2: She says these kinds of dangerous surges can happen in
Speaker 2: lots of places and the problem is growing. Today. On
Speaker 2: the show, what caused the fire in Waltham and how
Speaker 2: many homes are at risk? This is big tape from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm your host, Sarah Holder. Dangerous power surges
Speaker 2: like the one in Waltham are not supposed to be
Speaker 2: able to make their way to people's homes. So what happened?
Speaker 2: To explain, Noreene started by walking us through the tightly
Speaker 2: controlled systems that are in place to prevent this from happening.
Speaker 1: So the grid is generally divided into two domains. Think
Speaker 1: of it like the highway and the road system of America.
Speaker 1: You have the bigger high voltage transmission system, which takes
Speaker 1: power produced from nuclear plants, coal plants, natural gas plants.
Speaker 1: So it's high voltage power that's too powerful to be
Speaker 1: used in homes, but you need it to stay at
Speaker 1: these high levels so that it can be transported across
Speaker 1: basically the interstate highways of power.
Speaker 2: To get off these interstates, power has to exit through
Speaker 2: these places called substations.
Speaker 1: The substations act as sort of like the exit ramp
Speaker 1: where the high voltage power can be downgraded to lower voltages.
Speaker 1: If you're going through a town and you see like
Speaker 1: a tangle of wires and boxes that are fenced off.
Speaker 1: That's a substation.
Speaker 2: These substations then convert the voltage so it can flow
Speaker 2: into smaller systems like the electricity poles that we see
Speaker 2: on the street.
Speaker 1: And then all those poles that are dotting the neighborhoods
Speaker 1: and towns, those have little boxes on them or buckets
Speaker 1: on them, and those are transformers. They're like the mini
Speaker 1: version of the substation.
Speaker 2: These transformers convert the power even lower to about one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty volts. This is the power that reaches
Speaker 2: our apartments and houses.
Speaker 1: That's what our cell phones, TVs and you know, appliances
Speaker 1: run on.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it starts at a really high voltage, it
Speaker 2: gets faried and distributed through these power lines and then
Speaker 2: downgraded once again so it can be gentle enough but
Speaker 2: still powerful enough to power the stuff that.
Speaker 1: We use for our lives exactly.
Speaker 2: And when this system is working properly, electricity flows to
Speaker 2: all the places it is needed at an even rate.
Speaker 2: This is called power quality.
Speaker 1: It's basically, can you get uninterrupted flow of powerty a home?
Speaker 1: You flip on your light? Is the power there, and
Speaker 1: is it a steady flow of power? Because if you
Speaker 1: have like power that just kind of like maybe like
Speaker 1: SAgs a little or surges, it decrades the equipment.
Speaker 2: That's how the system is supposed to work. So what
Speaker 2: went wrong in Waltham on that day back in June
Speaker 2: of life last year.
Speaker 1: So the substation is supposed to protect a stop power
Speaker 1: surges from being passed on that process malfunctioned. There was
Speaker 1: a breaker issue, That's what the utility said. And rodent
Speaker 1: infestation is the reason that the Utility Commission and the
Speaker 1: utility itself told us was a cause for the equipment malfunctioning.
Speaker 2: In a statement, the utility said that Waltham's quote unquote
Speaker 2: temporary over voltage was an isolated instance caused by rodents,
Speaker 2: and that it's not indicative of broader power quality issues
Speaker 2: in their system. They added, quote well, issues do occur
Speaker 2: from time to time, the electric system overall operates as
Speaker 2: designed every day, and there's no indication of widespread power
Speaker 2: quality issues within our service territory. That said, broader power
Speaker 2: quality issues do appear to be becoming more of a
Speaker 2: problem across America, and there are many strains on the
Speaker 2: US power grid that can cause similarly dangerous swings that
Speaker 2: can be caused.
Speaker 1: By winter storms, trees falling on power lines. It's high
Speaker 1: winds and lines hit each other. They're not supposed to touch
Speaker 1: its lines falling.
Speaker 2: And while these types of stresses on the system have
Speaker 2: been around for decades, Marine says, one of the main
Speaker 2: factors contributing to a higher risk of these types of
Speaker 2: incidents happening now is our aging infrastructure. Infrastructure that's now
Speaker 2: facing the pressure of more extreme weather, more electricity usage,
Speaker 2: and more renewable energy coming online.
Speaker 1: We're in this critical moment of we've got a growing economy.
Speaker 1: We're seeing more stress being placed by the push towards
Speaker 1: electrification as we increasingly have more gadgets and electrify everything
Speaker 1: like our cars. I'm thinking about someone in the energy
Speaker 1: industry that lives in affluent neighborhood in Houston told me how,
Speaker 1: like a couple of years ago now where on his
Speaker 1: street there used to be maybe like a few evs,
Speaker 1: and there was no problem. Everyone was able to hook
Speaker 1: up and they had no issues charging. But as more
Speaker 1: of the block and more of the neighborhood got evs,
Speaker 1: he started to get power quality notices on his EV charger.
Speaker 2: When we're back, we look at how widespread this problem
Speaker 2: actually is and what solutions are on the table. We're back.
Speaker 2: Before the break, we were speaking with my colleague Nourine Malik,
Speaker 2: who's been digging into why we appear to be seeing
Speaker 2: more power quality issues across the country. When we ask
Speaker 2: Mareene how frequently these voltage swings and power surges are
Speaker 2: happening exactly, she said, that's a difficult question to answer
Speaker 2: because while some parts of the system are federally regulated, these.
Speaker 1: Big utility sites nuclear plants, coal plants, natural gas plants
Speaker 1: like on that transmission super highway system, it has federal
Speaker 1: oversight and there's regulatory agencies that develop standards of reliability.
Speaker 2: Others are regulated locally, so local energy sites like the
Speaker 2: substation where the walth And fire started don't necessarily have
Speaker 2: federal oversight. And it's important to note in the Waltham case,
Speaker 2: the local regulator did not pursue a formal investigation, citing
Speaker 2: a satisfactory response by ever source, which is committed to
Speaker 2: installing new breakers and also redesigning aspects of the substation.
Speaker 2: In any case, the data gathered is sparse.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been looking at outages and just trying
Speaker 1: to better understand risk to consumers and the cost to consumers,
Speaker 1: and it seems like these events are more frequent, But
Speaker 1: no one I couldn't find a body like a federal
Speaker 1: or a repository anywhere of people that actually looked at
Speaker 1: this level of risk.
Speaker 2: Nourene says. One bit of data she was able to
Speaker 2: get on the potential size of the problem was from
Speaker 2: a company called Whisker Labs, which sells sensors to monitor
Speaker 2: surges and power quality, so.
Speaker 1: You can see if a home has a lot of
Speaker 1: power swings up and down within an hour, within a day,
Speaker 1: or within a few days. They consider that to be
Speaker 1: a high fire risk because you suddenly have dangerous flows
Speaker 1: of power consistently coming into your home.
Speaker 2: Whisker Labs estimates one point two million homes are exposed
Speaker 2: to dangerous power.
Speaker 1: So the type of power surges and SAgs that happened
Speaker 1: frequently in a year, and in that case, that does
Speaker 1: represent fire risk. Now, not every flicker is like a
Speaker 1: fire risk, but I think these are important issues to
Speaker 1: understand so that if there are hot spots across the
Speaker 1: country or in parts of the country, that they are
Speaker 1: looked at so that you can prevent damage that can
Speaker 1: be avoided otherwise.
Speaker 2: So, given the increased strain on the US power grid,
Speaker 2: we wanted to know what steps utilities are looking at
Speaker 2: to prevent these types of dangerous wings from happening in
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 1: A utility in northern California is working on undergrounding more
Speaker 1: lines because the risk now there is too great. In
Speaker 1: Florida and the Southeast, they do try to underground lines
Speaker 1: there because of hurricane risks. But like in places like
Speaker 1: Texas or the Midwest, and even in New York, it's
Speaker 1: hard to underground lines because you have to then tear
Speaker 1: up everything and rebuild everything. And in Texas, Austin Energy
Speaker 1: told me that they are really worried about these climate
Speaker 1: risks and power quality issues and they're going through a
Speaker 1: study to figure out where it does make sense to
Speaker 1: underground lines.
Speaker 2: But Noreene says a major factor holding back utilities from
Speaker 2: just putting all their power lines underground right now is cost.
Speaker 1: You know, you can never fool proof the system on
Speaker 1: one hundred percent because it's too costly, say that you're
Speaker 1: going to basically do the gold plated standard. In some cases,
Speaker 1: that might be undergrounding all the lines that cost one
Speaker 1: million to three million dollars a mile to underground them.
Speaker 2: Figuring out how to pay for changes like moving power
Speaker 2: lines underground can be complicated because ultimately the costs of
Speaker 2: any changes will be passed on to the customer's bills.
Speaker 1: They're already facing higher costs because the grid is aging,
Speaker 1: and then the extra growth is adding two people's transmission
Speaker 1: bills and distribution bills. They pay for that directly, So
Speaker 1: there is this conscious effort of trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to make the most prudent investments.
Speaker 2: As for the house where the fire broke out in
Speaker 2: Wealth in last June, Nourene says, the surge caused fire
Speaker 2: damage so bad that the home was completely ravaged.
Speaker 1: The family has been displaced, and it's been like six
Speaker 1: plus months. And then on top of that, all these
Speaker 1: other people are facing extra costs, some of them thousands
Speaker 1: or tens of thousands of dollars several blocks away, even
Speaker 1: like a mile away or within the mile. People were
Speaker 1: also experiencing issues the utility.
Speaker 2: Ever Source has told the local regulator will redesign parts
Speaker 2: of the substation and install new breakers.
Speaker 1: Eversource has said that they are continuing to make investments
Speaker 1: to maintain, strengthen, upgrade, and modernize both its transmission and
Speaker 1: distribution systems, so make sure that all pieces of the
Speaker 1: grid can better weather these But when.
Speaker 2: It comes to making the US power grid more resilient,
Speaker 2: the task ahead is bigger than Waltham. You know.
Speaker 1: The electric industry has been called one of the most
Speaker 1: complicated machine ever made by humankind because it has to
Speaker 1: flow in real time and perfectly balance everything, and there's
Speaker 1: so many things that can go wrong. But on a
Speaker 1: consumer level, it's rare to get that level of insight.
Speaker 1: You only see it manifesting in the form of like
Speaker 1: flickering lights or if your appliances get fried. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, these are hidden risks and we're getting
Speaker 1: insight into them for the first time.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm
Speaker 2: Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by Adriana Tapia. It
Speaker 2: was edited by Caitlin Penny and Millie Munchie. It was
Speaker 2: fact checked by Tiffany Choi. It was mixed by Alex Uguia.
Speaker 2: Our senior producers are Naomi Shaven and Jill Duddy Carlely.
Speaker 2: We get editorial direction from Elizabeth Ponso, Nicole Beemster bor
Speaker 2: is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.