From Reliability to Resilience: Planning the Grid Against the Extremes
Although extreme events, mainly natural disasters and climate change-driven severe weather, are the result of naturally occurring processes, power system planners, regulators, and policy makers do not usually recognize them within network reliability standards. Instead, planners have historically designed the electric power infrastructure accounting for the so-called credible (or “average”) outages that usually represent single or (some kind of) simultaneous faults (e.g., faults on double circuits).
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Wildfire Resiliency: California Case for Change
The world has seen an increase in catastrophic wildfires that have caused loss of lives, massive economic impacts from the properties and structures destroyed, and negative impacts on our environment and ecosystem. A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey shows the greenhouse gas emissions from the 2018 California wildfires is on par with the entire year of equivalent emissions from all electricity generations combined feeding the needs of California.
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Data-Driven Engineering: The Reliability and Resilience of the North American Bulk Power System [Technology Leaders]
Electricity is an essential need for modern society. Nearly everything we do relies on safe and affordable electric energy. The constant demand for reliable energy delivery exists during a time of rapid changes to and evolutions of the bulk power system (BPS) in North America. Inverter-based resources, such as wind, solar photovoltaic (PV), battery energy storage systems, and hybrid plants, continue to transform the mix of BPS-connected generating resources. Sustainability and climate change initiatives are driving innovations in end-use loads, such as the electrification of the transportation sector.
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Powerlines and Wildfires: Overview, Perspectives, and Climate Change: Could There Be More Electricity Blackouts in the Future?
Overhead powerlines cross extensive areas of forest and grasslands, and these areas are often flammable and can burn. Wildfire is a natural phenomenon important to many ecosystems around the globe, but also capable of considerable damage to people and communities. As a result of human activity in natural spaces, people have altered wildfire regimes over time, and wildfires have become a threat to people, to their property, and infrastructure.
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Advancements in Clean Air Insulation Technologies for Switchgear and Circuit Breakers
Our power systems and grids are rapidly transforming to help realize a CO2 -neutral world. Reducing CO2 and equivalent greenhouse gases (GHG) is an important step to address global warming. Power systems must phase out the most potent GHG, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6 ), to achieve this CO2 -neutral society. SF6 has the highest known global warming potential (GWP) of all GHG, estimated to remain in the atmospheric environment for 3,200 years. There is also no SF6 gas waste management system commercially available today. At the same time, utilities must ensure transmission performance and reliability are maintained or increased.
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