Protecting The Electric Grid From Natural Disasters

Aug 12: The White House Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released a report that assesses how to best protect the nation's electric grid from power outages that occur during natural disasters. This week marks the tenth anniversary of one of the worst power outages in the United States, during which tens of millions of Americans were affected across parts of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

    The report -- Economic Benefits of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience to Weather Outages -- finds that grid resilience is increasingly important as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of severe weather and estimates the economic impact of power outages on the nation's economy. The President's Climate Action Plans calls for upgrading the country's electric grid to help make electricity more reliable, save consumers money on their energy bills, and promote clean energy sources [See WIMS 6/25/13 & See WIMS 6/26/13].

    Patricia Hoffman, DOE Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability said, "The U.S. electric grid is a vital component of the nation's infrastructure and delivers, transmits, and distributes electric power to millions of Americans in homes, schools, offices, and factories across the United States. Investment in a 21st century modernized electric grid has been an important focus of President Obama's administration and this report underscores the importance of continued cross-sector investment to make the grid more resilient to the causes of power outages, including severe weather."

    The new report focuses its analysis on the impact of power outages caused by severe weather between 2003 and 2012, finding:

• Weather-related outages are estimated to have cost the U.S. economy an inflation-adjusted annual average of $18 billion to $33 billion.
• Roughly 679 power outages, each affecting at least 50,000 customers, occurred due to weather events. The aging nature of the grid -- much of which was constructed over a period of more than one hundred years -- has made Americans more susceptible to outages caused by severe weather.
• In 2012, the United States suffered eleven billion-dollar weather disasters -- the second-most for any year on record, behind only 2011.
• Since 1980, the United States has sustained 144 weather disasters whose damage cost reached or exceeded $1 billion and seven of the ten costliest storms in U.S. history occurred between 2004 and 2012.

    The report calls for increased cross-sector investment in the electric grid and identifies strategies for modernizing the grid to better prevent power outages. These strategies include: conducting exercises to identify and mitigate the potential impacts of hazards to the grid; working with utilities to harden their infrastructure against wind and flood damage; increasing overall system flexibility and robustness of the grid; and supporting implementation of 21st century technologies that can quickly alert utilities when consumers experience a power outage or there is a system disruption and automatically reroute power to avoid further outages.

    These strategies are designed to build on current initiatives, including the President's "Policy Framework for the 21st Century Grid,"[See WIMS 6/15/11] which set out a four-pillared strategy for modernizing the grid and directed billions of dollars toward investments in 21st century smart grid technologies, and the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocation of $4.5 billion to the Energy Department for investments in modern grid technology. These investments have begun to increase the resilience and reliability of the grid in the face of severe weather.

    Access a release from DOE (click here). Access the complete 28-page report (click here). Access links to related reports on Grid Resilience To Climate Changes (click here). Access the Smart Grid website for more information (click here). [#Energy/Grid, #Climate]