• POWER GRIDIn the Central U.S., an Electric Grid Bottleneck Persists

    By Robert Zullo

    Forty-five million people live in the area managed by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the organization that runs a massive portion of the North American electric grid running from Manitoba, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico. Where the northern part of the system meets the southern end — a narrow corridor that traverses a corner of southeast Missouri and northeastern Arkansas — there’s a bottleneck that can hurt electric customers and create major inefficiencies on both sides of the divide.

  • POWER-GRID RESILIENCECould April’s Eclipse Impact the Power Grid? Energy Expert Says Not to Worry

    By Olga Rukovets

    On April 8, a total solar eclipse will be visible across parts of North America, following a narrow track from Mexico through the U.S. and all the way to Canada. There have also been concerns about how the eclipse might impact areas that rely on solar power along the way.

  • ENERGY SECURITYAllowing More Juice to Flow Through Power Lines Could Hasten Clean Energy Projects

    By Alex Brown

    If the thousands of proposed solar, wind and battery energy projects got built, they would more than double the amount of electricity that is currently produced nationwide and get the U.S. much closer to its clean energy targets. But there’s one big problem: America’s power lines can’t carry that much juice. Grid-enhancing technologies can help existing lines carry more electricity.

  • POWER-GRID SECURITYScientists Put Forth a Smarter Way to Protect a Smarter Grid

    By Tom Rickey

    Proliferation of programmable devices presents more gateways for cyberattack. That makes the electric grid, increasingly chock full of devices that interact with one another and make critical decisions, vulnerable to bad actors who might try to turn off the power, damage the system or worse.

  • RESILIENT POWER GRIDCreating the Self-Healing Grid of the Future

    Self-healing electrical grids: It may sound like a concept from science fiction, with tiny robots or some sentient tech crawling around fixing power lines, but in a reality not far from fiction, a team of researchers is bringing this idea to life. What’s not hard to imagine is the potential value of a self-healing grid, one able to adapt and bounce back to life, ensuring uninterrupted power even when assailed by a hurricane or a group of bad guys.

  • POWER GRIDUsing Idle Trucks to Power the Grid with Clean Energy

    After analyzing energy demand on Alberta’s power grid during rush hour, researchers propose an innovative way to replenish electrical grids with power generated from fuel cells in trucks. Idled electric vehicles can act as mobile generators and help power overworked and aging electricity grids.

  • POWER-GRID RESILIENCESmart Microgrids Can Restore Power More Efficiently and Reliably in an Outage

    By Emily Cerf

    It’s a story that’s become all too familiar — high winds knock out a power line, and a community can go without power for hours to days, an inconvenience at best and a dangerous situation at worst. Engineers developed an AI model that optimizes the use of renewables and other energy sources to restore power when a main utility fails.

  • POWER GRIDDOE Invests $39 Million to Support a 21st Century Electric Grid

    The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $39 million for projects across DOE’s National Laboratories to help modernize the electricity grid. The investments will support the development and deployment of concepts, tools, and technologies needed to measure, analyze, predict, protect, and control the grid of the future while incorporating equity and the best available climate science.

  • POWER GRIDHow ERCOT Is Narrowly Getting Through an Extreme Summer — and How Experts Say It Could Do Better

    By Emily Foxhall

    Record-high power demand and faltering electricity sources have tested the grid in the past month, forcing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to dig deep into its toolbox to keep power flowing.

  • POWER GRID & WILDFIRESShutting Off Power to Reduce Wildfire Risk on Windy Days Isn’t a Simple Decision – an Energy Expert Explains the Trade-Offs Electric Utilities Face

    By Tim C. Lieuwen

    Maui County is suing Hawaiian Electric, claiming the utility was negligent for not shutting off power as strong winds hit the island in the hours before the city of Lahaina burned. Electricity is critical infrastructure and a foundational bedrock to many other services, so utilities have to balance the risk of keeping power on with the risks created by shutting power off.

  • POWER-GRID RESILIENCEReached: Milestone in Power Grid Optimization on World’s First Exascale Supercomputer

    By Jeremy Thomas

    Ensuring the nation’s electrical power grid can function with limited disruptions in the event of a natural disaster, catastrophic weather or a manmade attack is a key national security challenge. Compounding the challenge of grid management is the increasing amount of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind that are continually added to the grid, and the fact that solar panels and other means of distributed power generation are hidden to grid operators.

  • THE RUSSIAN CONNECTIONBaltic States Seek to Decouple Their Power Grids from Russia

    Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are seeking to disconnect from an energy grid network shared with Russia and Belarus by early 2025. Vilnius is pushing from an earlier exit from the grid, which Tallin opposes.

  • RESILIENCEBringing Resilience to Small-Town Hydropower

    Using newly developed technologies, researchers demonstrated how hydropower with advanced controls and use of a mobile microgrid, can enable small communities to maintain critical services during emergencies.

  • POWER GRIDSooner Than You Might Think: Virtual Power Plants Are Coming to Save the Grid

    By Dan Gearino

    Networks of thousands of home-based batteries could be key to a cleaner, more reliable electricity system. After years of pilot projects, utilities and battery companies now have networks with thousands of participants in California, Utah, and Vermont, among others.

  • MICROGRIDS & WILDFIRESMicrogrids Can Help Communities Adapt to Wildfires

    Wildfires have become increasingly frequent due to climate change, with record occurrences in areas not historically prone to them. For some of the most vulnerable communities, clean energy microgrids can be both more effective and cheaper than conventional technologies.