Delaney Hall

Why are heat waves a particular concern?

In the time you've been with SRP, have there been any close calls where, you know, for example, Phoenix almost had rolling blackouts?

Yeah, what I hear you saying is in a summer like that, the margin for error is small.

And summers in Phoenix are only getting harder, not just because the heat is getting more intense, but because of the growing demand on the whole system.

Phoenix is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., even as it gets hotter and hotter.

And major industrial customers like data centers and factories, they're moving to Arizona, too.

Angie told me that a single big customer can use as much electricity as 55,000 homes.

The system Angie describes is resilient.

It's been built and rebuilt and adapted over more than a century.

But right now, it feels like the grid is facing its biggest challenge yet.

Summers are getting hotter, and the infrastructure needed to keep the city cool can take a decade to build.

This is such a classic infrastructure thing where, like...

People don't think about it.

You know, it's quite boring when it works because it just exists in the background and we take it all for granted.

And it's really only when something goes terribly wrong that, you know, we wake up and pay attention to how very important something like the grid is.

Right.

Yeah.

So that we don't have to.

We started with a question.

And we have an answer.