NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with professor Le Xie of Texas A&M University about what Texas can do to prevent blackouts due to extreme weather as the state has experienced this week. All week, Texans have been suffering through the worst winter storm the state has seen in decades. Temperatures are now rising, and gas pipelines are thawing. As power gets restored, the conversation now is, how do you prevent this from happening again? Well, engineering professor Le Xie of Texas A&M University has been thinking about what can be done to safeguard the supply of electricity, like winterizing infrastructure or connecting Texas with the national power grid so it can lean on other states in times like this. But Le Xie is also thinking about how to better control demand. CHANG: ...Ideally. But what would it take for Texas to move to smart grid technology, as you describe it? LE: So the good news is that a big chunk of the smart grid technologies are already in place. For example, a majority of the Texas residential customers have already been equipped with the so-called smart meters, which is a new type of meter that allows for faster and remote and automatic control of households' power needs. What we would need further would be a scaled-up deployment of grid edge technologies, for example, smarter thermostat in people's house, smarter circuit controllers, such as power electronic technologies. Those you would have seen in your Tesla car charging stations. And I would also want to emphasize, equally important, the institutional design of proper market incentives and business innovations so that for such demand reduction during critical times, such demand are properly credited and awarded, so customers feel like it is a carrot, not a stick. CHANG: So you call this storm a wake-up call. Are you hopeful that some of these ideas might actually be implemented now because of everything that has happened this week in Texas? LE: What we have experienced in Texas in the past week was way beyond the imagination of most of us. And just like Winston Churchill have said, never let a crisis go wasted. I think this is - I want to put it on a broader context. This is really part of the growing pain of the energy system transition not only for Texas, but for the entire country and perhaps for the entire world as we move towards a cleaner, a more sustainable and more resilient energy future. CHANG: Professor Le Xie of Texas A&M University, thank you very much for speaking with us today. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/19/9695...dress-its-energy-infrastructure-going-forward
Which one? NPR's Ailsa Chang, or Professor Le Xie of Texas A&M University? Not like that it's a weird or slightly racist question or anything.
I remember Donna Chang. Jerry Seinfeld wanted to date her because he thought she was Chinese and when he met her she was a white woman.
OR .. we could just bring back coal for electric generation, and say screw the global warming wing nuts.
