Climate change may overload US electrical grid: study

As the planet warms due to climate change and hot days become more common, the US electrical grid could be unable to meet peak energy needs by century's end, researchers warned Monday. The cost to upgrade the US electrical grid so it could cope with peak demands may be on the order of $180 billion, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "As the electricity grid is built to endure maximum load, our findings have significant implications for the construction of costly peak generating capacity," said the study.