A Grid Stuck in the Past
Anyone who has experienced a summer blackout or waited years for a solar farm to get approved knows the U.S. electrical grid isn’t exactly nimble. America’s power grid, much of it built decades ago, is straining to meet 21st-century demands – from the surge of electric vehicles to energy-hungry data centers powering artificial intelligence. It’s widely considered outdated and bogged down by bureaucracy, and the numbers tell the story. In 2023 the average U.S. electricity customer endured about 366 minutes without power (over six hours). By contrast, in Germany – a leader in grid modernization – the average outage was just 12 minutes.
