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What is the national power grid and how resilient is it?
[FoxNews] Severe weather, targeted attacks threaten US power grid, but system is 'extremely reliable,' according to expert. /sarc
Transmission towers have become increasingly hardened against winds, he said. Some power lines are designed so that if a tree limb falls across them, the lines drop away from the pole rather than dragging down the entire pole which would take much longer to fix. "Part of resiliency is making sure that we don't get those long duration outages by putting in systems that allow us to be able to recover quickly," he said. The national power grid is actually made up of three loosely-connected regions. That's good news when it comes to resiliency because it means if there's a serious problem in the Western interconnection, the Eastern U.S. should be fine, Brooks said. "An issue that starts to happen and hopefully would never actually cascade into a complete blackout, that wouldn't go beyond those individual grids," he said. A diverse array of power sources is also key to grid resiliency, Brooks said. Solar power might perform well during the day, but the benefits vanish when the sun does, so other resources such as nuclear, gas or coal might pick up the slack. "The key is making sure you understand how all of those perform in the context of those needs of the system," he said. "Resiliency, affordability, reliability, sustainability." Shortly after taking office, President Biden committed to making the American economy "net-zero" by 2050. The administration paused new oil and natural gas leases on public lands, among other actions aimed at promoting "green" energy sources. A recent report from an energy watchdog found some utility companies have retired existing fossil fuel power generation before sufficient alternatives were in place, which could result in supply shortfalls. The ambitious decarbonization goals change the way energy experts plan for the future. "Our models basically show that in order to make that happen, the most economic pathways are for the electric grid to be used to help decarbonize the other energy sectors," Brooks said. The electric sector currently fills about 20% of U.S. energy needs, but models show that figure rising as high as 60% by 2050 in order to meet the Biden administration's goals, Brooks said. That means electrifying transportation, industry, commercial operations and homes. "The grid is going to only be increasingly important as we go forward," Brooks said. "We'll have to all continue to work together, to innovate, to invest to make sure that we have those resources that are available for the grid to provide for us as we need." Posted by: Skidmark 2023-01-21 |
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