[Majromax]

A robust infrastructure should be able to handle surge loads. This isn't an extraordinary heat wave after some other natural disaster has directly damaged the power grid; it's that the grid as designed and built can't handle this load.

It's hardly conclusive for a "grand decline" narrative, of course, since this is just one anecdote for an entire society.

[khuey]

Do we really need to pay for an electric grid that can handle a once every 20 year load?

[cableshaft]

Thanks to climate change, this is probably not going to continue to be a 1 in 20 year load. Expect this to be more and more frequent over the coming years. Might be an every year and/or multiple times a year thing within the next decade or two.

I've read some predictions that suggest these heat waves becoming a regular thing could happen within the next five years, but I'm sticking with more conservative predictions.

[AngryData]

Do you really need to pay for house wiring that can handle a once every 20 year load? Pretty sure you would change your tune when the wiring melts in one of your walls.

[khuey]

This is why houses have circuit breakers, which are functionally identical to the load shedding we had last night ...

[pwarner]

That's the real question. Even 1 in 10 year load, do you build for it or just live with it? It's just a $ decision.

[manquer]

Grid yes , maybe not the power plants themselves. Typically in robust networks you have good interconnects to neighbours you can purchase power from .

Also robust grid which enables selling back to the grid would have helped, such extreme hot weather goes in hand with solar generation

[khuey]

The problem is not lack of grid capacity. California is capable of importing upwards of 11 GW[0] but there was only around 8 GW[1] available yesterday because it's hot in neighboring states like Oregon too.

The load shedding occurred around 8-10pm after the sun has gone down (but while it's still quite hot) so more solar wouldn't help much.

[0] http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx and select 9/13/2019 [1] Same as above but select 8/14/2020.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I think you're misunderstanding how power grids work. There's no way to stockpile large supplies of power like you can with food and water; to first order, all electricity that's produced today has to be consumed today. So it's an impossible task to have enough capacity available for arbitrary demand surges. It's not just a matter of shoveling coal in the furnaces twice as fast or drawing down the local power reservoirs.