How the US Power Grid Became a Mess Just When We Need It Most

The US power grid is under stress. Outages are much more common than they were two decades ago, even as electricity consumption has remained little changed. One culprit is the extreme weather brought on by human-caused climate change. Another is the age of the grid, much of which was built in the 1960s and ’70s.

That would be enough of a national problem by itself. But utilities are also under pressure to satisfy a growing need to connect renewable energy sources, which requires building even more transmission lines to carry electricity and more substations to regulate voltage. And electricity consumption ...