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Engineer builds energy-independent home, taking "going green" to the next level.

When it's as hot and humid outside as it is right now in the northeast, air conditioning feels like a miracle. Until the lights flicker, dim, and go out. With air conditioning creating massive spikes power consumption, occasionally the grid calls it quits. That's just what happened on Tuesday evening, when more than 200,000 homes in the New York region lost their power. Many people are still waiting for the power to come back. Before you're sweating it out in candlelight, listen to our blackout survival guide.

Listen to the episode Today's guests include Dr. Badrul Chowdhury and student Sushant Barave. A University of Missouri-Rolla professor is developing techniques to improve power grid reliability and prevent cascading outages during disturbances. "If we operate the power grid the way we've been operating it the last 40 years, we're going to have more failures," says Dr. Badrul Chowdhury, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UMR. "There's no question about it. Unless we have new technologies and innovative operating strategies, we're going to see a lot more outages and blackouts on the system."