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Québécois here – we have nationalized our power company (it's actually province-scale), and by our current standards, residents having hours of outage is an eme
by Lalabadie 3y ago
Québécois here – we have nationalized our power company (it's actually province-scale), and by our current standards, residents having hours of outage is an emergency, and several days is newsworthy every time.
We have east coast weather, lots of empty land between villages, dramatic temperature changes, inhospitable terrain, etc. – we have most of the reasons power companies usually have for defending that days-long outages are normal.
It's possible to build a resilient grid, but not if profit becomes the only incentive (see Texas' issues). Hydro-Québec is steadily profitable, but not maximized for profit, which is key for utilities.
- sponaugle 3y agoNationalizing our power grid management would not solve these problems. Keep in mind the US power grid is more than 10 times the size of all of Canada in terms of production, and of course far far larger than in terms of distribution endpoints. The investment needed to do things like bury power lines would be hundreds of billions of dollar. The dollars could be spent without nationalizing the grid, but the problem is the money will not get spent. If we did nationalize, it would add another level of government spending and waste that would still not have the funds needed to actual fix anything. Perhaps if we did less of the world's policing we could spend some of that money on infrastructure.