Every American has to lose power for 8 hours a year

Social organizations warn that the power supply system collapses due to disaster are endangering the American people, especially the elderly, disabled, and other vulnerable populations.

Mr. Richard Skaff lives in Northwest California, which has regularly suffered from wildfires in the past few years, every time a forest fire is complicated, his residential area is cut off. This phenomenon over and over again made him very unhappy. He said: “They didn’t upgrade the electricity system as much as it should, otherwise we wouldn’t have to worry about the forest fire seasons. The elderly and disabled people face a lot of difficulties in their situation. critical situation”.

Every time a forest fire occurs, the situation of rushing to buy equipment to cope with power outages happens often. According to the AP news agency, the average American suffers from power outages for eight hours a year. Not only in the state of California, across the United States, the number of power outages due to natural disasters has doubled in the past 20 years. Increasingly extreme weather has also contributed to the crippling of an already degraded power supply network in the US.

According to Ms. Alexandra Von Meier – Energy Research Specialist, UC Berkeley, USA: “We have seen climate change make the weather more extreme, power cuts will happen more and more in even the most remote areas. In normal areas, which are less affected, the pressure on the power transmission system will increase.”

Power companies in the US also face a lot of difficulties to repair damage and upgrade systems after each disaster. Louisiana’s largest utility company spent about $4 billion repairing damage from the 2020 and 2021 hurricanes. The U.S. Department of Energy says that, compared with the 2000s, utility companies have quadrupled their budgets, to about $40 billion a year, for power transmission systems. However, these efforts are not enough when faced with the fact that power outages still occur when disasters strike.

* Invite readers to watch the programs broadcast by Vietnam Television on TV Online and VTVGo!