You are listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper. My duct tape. The real duct tape. It fixes everything except that decision. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. From border to border, coast to coast, and all ships at sea. Here is your host, Keith.
SPEAKER_01Everybody, this is Keith, and you're listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast for July 11th, 2026. So back in February, we talked about the grid and how cold it was, the deep freeze that settled over the eastern seaboard, and some of the things that I did here in Richmond, try to stay comfortable during that freeze. So I want to get a little deep in the weeds. So if you're into podcasts that get a little deep in the weeds, this episode might be for you. So back in February, we were talking about keeping your lights on, generators, buddy heaters, window film, and
all of that. But tonight I want to talk about why the lights might go out in the first place. And I'll let you know the answer is not what most people think, but I'm sure a lot of you have figured it out already. So back in Richmond, three weeks of sub-zero temperatures, ice storm. I found the weak spots in my home, used the window film, buddy heaters, propane was sold out. And I touched on data centers briefly, but I want to get a little deeper into data centers since I've had a chance to do a little more research. So I mentioned data centers in that episode and how they plug straight into the grid, but I didn't really dig into it because I was more focused on my situation at my house trying to stay warm. But since then, holy moly, the number of data centers that are going up, that have received permits that are already built is absolutely staggering. You hear about data centers here, data centers there, but until you really start looking at the numbers, I had no idea they were as prevalent as they are. And here on the East Coast, we just lived through a real-time grid emergency. That was nine or ten days ago. So when it comes to how fragile the U.S. power grid is, everybody worries about a hacker getting into the system and taking down part of the grid or all of the grid. If they were able to get in, it would just be a domino effect. And in crazy heat like we're having now and like we had a week or two ago, it would be absolutely devastating. And look, hacking is a real threat. Don't get me wrong. I'm not dismissing it. But what nobody is talking about is the grid is already being overwhelmed, not by hackers, but by demand. And we were really tested about a week to 10 days
ago. So when we talk about the grid, PJM Interconnection is the largest U.S. grid operator, covering 13 states plus Washington, D.C. Future demand of 166,000 megawatts was the prediction on July 2nd when it was so hot. It actually broke the all-time record of 165,000 megawatts in 2006, a record that stood for almost 20 years. Now don't get too worried about a megawatt and a gigawatt and a terawatt and all that stuff right now. I'll throw out some numbers and I'll try to give it a little bit of context. Like I said before, the U.S. Department of Energy issued emergency orders on June 30th before the holiday weekend before they knew it was going to get bad. Those orders authorize the curtailing of data centers and large power users waiv plant pollution limits to bring more generation online. The NYISO and the MISO in the Midwest and the South were also approaching their all-time records as well. So what I'm talking about, this is not a forecast, it's not a prediction. This already happened about a week to 10 days ago. The Department of Energy stepped in and told data centers to get off the grid, or we were looking at rolling blackouts across 13 states. Now, data centers and the general contractors that are putting these up, they've already got a bad PR problem as it is. So I would hope, or I would at least think, when DOE told them to get off the grid, they did. Because can you imagine a rolling blackout in Northern Virginia because 15 data centers refused to get off the grid or didn't get off the grid completely? Talk about a PR problem. Talk about putting yourself, backing yourself into a corner when you want to build 25 more of these things over the next four or five years. So let's look at scale. And I'm gonna throw some numbers out and I get it. Some of these numbers, I may as well be speaking them in Russian. The US data center electricity use in 2024, so a couple years ago, was roughly 180 terawatts. 2030, it's projected to be between 400 and 800 terawatts. We don't even know where adding that range because there's plenty of data centers left to be built. Data center power demand in 2025, 31 gigawatts. In 2026, a year later, 41 gigawatts. In 2027, 66. It's going to double in less than two years. So a single data center is roughly 100 to 1,000 megawatts. 100 megawatts will power 80,000 homes. 1,000 megawatts will power 800,000 homes. So just put that into context. One data center, that's the power it takes to power 80,000 homes. Now it's almost difficult to even imagine that scale, but that is what we're working with. Utility connection requests. So these are the the requests to the power companies. 700 gigawatts. So 700 gigawatts of connection requests. So people are saying, I need this, I need that. And all told in 2025, there were 700 gigawatts of requests. Now in 2023, there was only 477. So not quite double, but almost doubled in just two years. So let me put this all into English. One of those big data centers uses as much electricity as a city of 800,000 people. And they're requesting more power connections than the entire United States used two years ago. Let me read that again. And they're requesting more connections than the entire United States used two years ago. That is mind-boggling.
Something I learned. Northern Virginia, 90 miles north of me, is the largest data center hub in the world. It kind of makes sense. It's around DC. You've got the Pentagon, the industrial military complex. They need power, they need plenty of AI. Data centers in Virginia currently, currently consume 25% of Virginia's electricity. In 2030, between 45 and 60%, just in four years, it's going to at least double. And Virginia sits inside PJM's territory. That's the grid that broke all the records, the one that has 13 states plus DC. So again, this is not some abstract problem out in Silicon Valley. This is Northern Virginia. This is right up 95 from me. And it's the grid that I am tied to here in Richmond. So back in February, I read a lot about some towns in Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Washington state were pushing back against some of these data centers being built, demanding tech companies fund their own power plants. So the tech companies that are putting up these data centers, people are pushing back. Local government is pushing back and saying, hey, don't tie into our grid. You need to make your own power plant on the property or somewhere that you can draw from. You're not pulling from the public grid as much as you are. So in February, I talked about some of these incentives that I called bribes. Well, the bill is coming due. My electric bill here in Virginia is going to go up probably 15 to 20% to help pay for these data centers. Now, if you listen to Virginia Power and the politicians, there's a lot of double speak going on, but that's what it boils down to is the average citizen is going to pay to get these data centers online and to keep them online.
So the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, NERC, NERC, their job is to make sure that the grid works. They issue a report card. And the report card they say for the grid is this, and this is frightening. The grid is adequate under normal conditions, end quote. So that's like your mechanic telling you, hey Keith, your brakes are great as long as you're not going downhill in the rain, and then you may fly off the cliff into the valley below. But when it's 105 degrees and everybody's AC is running and the solar panels are not producing what they're supposed to, that's not adequate. Those are not normal conditions when ACs are running and it's 105 degrees, and solar panels are not able to supplement what you need. So NURC projects a 15% increase in summer demand over the next 10 years. I think that's low. Winter, winter peak is growing even faster, 18% over the next several years. The constraint of AI is no longer the computer chips. I remember reading for the last several months supply chain issues coming out of China, computer chip issues, a lot of battles back and forth. I thought it was the computer chips that were slowing things down. It's not. The constraint on AI is the power, is the megawatts. And that's a direct quote from some industry analysts. The AI race is now running right through power plants. And you and I, we're competing for the same electricity. We want to flip on our lights, we want to flip on the AC, but we're actually competing with the data center 30 miles away or 100 miles away if it's tied, or even further if it's tied to the same
grid. And I've spoken about this before. The podcast is listened to in approximately 127 countries, 4,500 cities, give or take. So this is not an American problem. The EU is dealing with the exact same thing right now, and in a lot of ways, they are worse off than we are. So the EU is still getting hammered since late June, yeah, mid-June. Now we're into mid-July. So roughly a month, the most severe June heat event ever recorded in Western Europe. France hit 40 degrees C, 104 degrees Fahrenheit, broke all records dating back to 1947, and at least the death of 40 people was directly attributed to this heat wave. Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary all had their hottest days on record. U.S. grid operators issued emergency warnings on July 9th, just a few days ago, for evening peak outages. 106,000 customers lost power in France during that spike in June. There's several things going on in the EU that causes their situation to be a little more grave than ours here in the States. So their demand surges with AC, just like us. Generation, power generation drops. Heat makes power plants less efficient. Something I did not know. Nuke plants cannot discharge hot cooling water into rivers that are already overheated. Again, something I really didn't think about. Wind. Wind disappears. Wind turbines are not efficient. They're just a big black hole financially. I digress. So wind disappears in heat waves like this. A high pressure system that causes such heat waves also kill wind generation. The lowest wind week in the EU hit the same time as this heat wave back in June. Solar, again, I'll get off my high horse, but solar is not very efficient. It's getting better, don't get me wrong, but solar does not help you in the evening when everybody's getting home from work and it's the hottest part of the day, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6 p.m. So AC demands peak at roughly 7 p.m. when solar is dropping off. So you can't really supplement that with solar. Germany took the last three nuke plants offline completely. Full phase out. Germany has zero nuke plants. Those are very reliable, provided a very strong baseline of power 24-7, regardless of whether hot, cold, the plants are putting out electricity. During the June heat wave, German electricity prices hit 747 Euros per megawatt hour. That's roughly 10 to 15 times more expensive. Belgium, listen to this, 1,038 Euros per megawatt hour. That's roughly 1,100 US dollars for one megawatt hour. That's not how much it costs to run their AC for one hour. It's one megawatt hour costs roughly 1,100 US dollars. And the new chancellor in Germany has said that taking those three plants offline was a huge mistake. And former plant managers for those nuke plants have written the government and requested that they restart them. And that's a whole different animal. To take a nuke offline, to take a nuclear power plant offline costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time, very tedious process. To bring it back online, just flip it in reverse. You can't do it overnight. It's going to take weeks or months, and it's going to cost a lot of money. So Germany made this decision to shut them all down, all of them. Now, during the heat wave, their electricity, like I said, went up 10 to 15 times higher than normal. It's a huge mistake, according to their government. And this is what happens when you remove the most reliable, in my opinion, the most reliable source of power that you can have. Now, this is a cautionary tale for all of us here in the States as we continue to retire coal plants and lean heavier on solar and wind without having the backup to match what we're taking offline. So as far as AC goes, in the United States, roughly 90% of the homes have AC. In the EU, about 20% overall, the UK with 5%, Germany with 3%. As more Europeans install ACs, what's going to happen? The demand is going to increase. So with all this information, what can you and I do about this? So we've got the problem. Let's talk about what we can actually do because this is what the podcast is about. Practical, common sense steps.
So if you're in Virginia like me, BJM, the connector, bookmark their website. When they issue a hot weather alert, that's roughly a 48-hour head start before it hits. Same lesson as February. They're going to let you know if there's a cold snap coming that's going to strain the grid, or a heat wave coming that's also going to strain the grid. In February, like I said, I was trying to heat one room with a buddy heater. Same concept in the summer. You don't need to cool the entire house down. Pick one room, put in a window unit on a generator if the grid goes down, and keep that room livable. It's like triage, like you do in a medical situation. We're going to triage the situation and find that we can run the window unit on the generator if it happens to go down. Now, mini splits are also very efficient and are becoming more and more popular every day here in the US. There are some mini splits that run solely on solar and some, I guess, dual purpose, if you will, it can be grid tied as well as tied to solar. The grid goes down, or you flip the switch to turn it off the grid or pull it from power, then it's going to start running off solar. And those mini-splits, oddly enough, are very, very efficient. We get back to generators. Something I did not know. Generators don't do as well in extreme heat. Approximately, a 10,000 watt generator may only produce 8,000 watts at 100 degrees plus. I've talked about ventilation before. Very critical. Do not have them enclosed or in a poorly ventilated space. A window AC unit is roughly between 500 and 1500 watts. Central AC, the one that does the whole house, between 3,000 and 5,000. So depending on what you want to run, do the math on that and find out what kind of generator you're going to need. Do you want one that runs central AC? That's going to be a huge draw, or one for a window unit, 500 to 1500 watts. And again, consider not cooling the entire house. So fuel storage in the summer, fuel for your generator. Gasoline degrades faster in the heat. Again, something I did not know. So use stabilizer, stay bill, or something similar. Store fuel in the shade, not in a hot garage or shed. I do know that. Propane is more stable in heat than gasoline. Didn't know that, but it kind of makes sense. The advantage is with your dual fuel generators. Those 20-pound propane cylinders, do not store them in direct sunlight. I knew that much. And rotate your stock. I've mentioned that before. Your propane cylinders, your gasoline, first in, first out, make sure it doesn't go bad. Well, the propane's not. So rotate your stock with your gasoline, first in, first out. Propane cylinders, you don't have to worry about that as much, if at all. But I just got in the habit of doing first in, first out. And so I do it with the propane cylinders as well. So if you're keeping up to date with your grid provider and you get this 48-hour window before they expect high temperatures or low temperatures or a significant draw on the grid, top off your fuel in your vehicle or in your generator or in your five-gallon or 10-gallon cans you have stored, buy ice, charge your batteries, and fill your coolers. Freeze bottles of water now, which is something I do. I have a case of water in my little chest freezer in the garage. They become cooling packs when the grid goes down. And when the grid goes down, you can pull them out and it becomes drinking water. Pre-cool your house. Crank the AC down the day before this heat emergency is supposed to go into effect. Let thermal mass work for you. Not going to get too deep into weeds on thermal mass, but if you live in a brick home, go out to the side of your home that faces the sun in the winter. In the morning, before the sun is even up, let's say east, in the morning, the east side of your brick home is still very warm. When the sun comes up and hits it for a couple hours, there are times when it's difficult to keep your hand on that brick because it absorbs a lot of heat. And then it dissipates that gradually, even at night, even two and three in the morning. You can go out and put your hand on the side of the house if it's a brick or stone home, and you can still feel the heat. Check your generator every month. Start it, load test it. If you have a transfer switch, confirm that that transfer switch is still working. And remember, back in February, Home Depot sold out of propane within 48 hours. They were also sold out of the buddy heaters as well. So there's something about demand response. And I knew a little bit about this, but I got a little better understanding when I did some research
for this podcast. Some utilities offer demand response programs that can cycle your AC during the peak periods. If you opted for this and you get a little bit of a discount, know what you've signed up for. Read the fine print. During the July 2nd emergencies, PJM, the grid that I'm on, demand response shed 4,000 megawatts off of their load, which means they turned off or turned up the thermostat on enough homes to free up 4,000 megawatts. Demand response sounds voluntary, but during an emergency, it might not be. Smart thermostats like Nest and EcoB are connected to utility programs that can remotely adjust your thermostat. You may have signed up for it, so know what you've signed up for it. Again, read the fine print, but in an emergency, they can do it on their own. So think about this. You go to work, you set your AC to 74, 75. I set mine to 75 once I leave the house and I have a smart thermostat. You come home, it's like 85 or 87 because PJM or your local utility company, your power company, has cycled your AC off while you're at work to free up wattage for the grid. I don't like that. My thermostat, about three months ago, I looked at my thermostat and had a little note saying we've adjusted your optimal temperature two degrees for peak performance. And I had to go into the settings and turn that off. I'm not sure if I accidentally turned that off, but I'm like, no, no. If I want my home to be 72 or 68 or 74, I'm paying for it. And that's what I'm going to do. It's kind of like people with like big trucks or big SUVs. They're like, well, if I'm paying for the gas and I want to have a truck or an SUV or what have you that gets 20 miles to a gallon instead of a smaller car that gets 28 or 30, then the person is like, well, I this is my vehicle. I'm paying for the gas. This is what I want to drive, and this is how I want to drive, very similar to how a lot of people look at their AC and their personal comfort in their home. So remember back in February, I found that leaky window that I used, the plastic draft seal. You can do that, and I've actually still got it sealed up. I have not found where the leak is. So I still have that sealed up. It's here in my office, and it's actually doing a lot better. Last year, when it got really warm here in the office, I thought it was because the multiple computers that I was running. And granted, that is some of it. But when I realized how drafty that window was back in February, now I realized why it was really that warm last summer and the summers previous. Now, when I come in here, even when it's really warm outside, the office is still pretty comfortable. So here's the part you probably don't want to hear, and I don't like saying it, but here's the straight poop. The grid that is being built, or the grid that is being expanded,
is not being built or expanded for homes. It's being built for AI and data centers. When the grid strains, real people are last in line. Your air conditioning is competing with Chat GPT, and that's not an exaggeration. That literally is what happened on July 2nd. Department of Energy had to step in and told the data centers to back it down because they don't want grandma, who has health issues, to lose power when it's 102 degrees out. That's basically where we are currently in the United States. When it gets too warm, the government, the Department of Energy has to step in and tell these private companies not so fast, quit pulling as much from the grid as you are because you're going to cause a blackout or a brownout. Same grid, different reasons, getting worse. In February, it was the cold, now it's the heat. Both times the grid was at its breaking point, the common thread, the grid was not built for this, and it's not being upgraded fast enough. So take care of your own home, your own apartment, wherever you live. Get your backup situation sorted out. Know what grid you are on and who operates that grid. And don't wait until the lights go out to figure this out. All right, folks, thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it as always. If you need to reach out, practical prep podcast at gmail.com. I'm on the Twitters, prep underscore podcast. All right, folks, stay cool out there, be careful out there, take care of one another, and until next time.
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