Grid securityReducing Risk and Avoiding Disaster – Creating Grid 2.0
It’s hard to imagine a world without electricity. But as demand increases, so do the assaults to the system that delivers that energy — the power grid. Severe weather is a primary driver of power outages. Aging infrastructure is also a problem for the electric system.
It’s hard to imagine a world without electricity. It powers elevators that allow us to build up, rather than out. Electricity keeps our homes at the right temperature. It helps to purify the water that we drink, and sometimes the air that we breathe. We use electricity for our phones and computers. And given the continuing growth of the Internet of Things, electricity demand will grow for many years to come. But as demand increases, so do the assaults to the system that delivers that energy — the power grid.
Severe weather is a primary driver of power outages. According to a recent report by the Department of Energy, weather-related outages alone have cost the country between $18 and $32 billion a year on average since 2003. According to economists in Texas, the recent winter storm that hit that state could end up costing as much as $200 billion — more than Hurricanes Harvey and Ike. Wildfires out west also create havoc to electric distribution systems. Power cuts during California’s wildfire season in 2019 are estimated to have cost the state as much as $2 billion.
Aging infrastructure is also a problem for the electric system. The grid is a mix of connections and agreements across state lines that uses sometimes archaic technology to survive, and its architecture is in need of a drastic overhaul. A report by the Pew Charitable Trusts suggests that a lack of investment in upgrading the power grid is going to cause more power outages in the future.
All of this was discussed in a recent webinar for journalists as part of the Resilience Media Project, which is a part of the larger Initiative on Communication and Sustainability at the Earth Institute of Columbia University.
Melissa Lott is the director of research for the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. She says the grid is complex, and it’s made up of much more than just power lines. “When we talk about the grid, your mind can go to just the wires. So, transmission wires, these really big things that take the electricity from power plants to closer to our homes, and then the smaller wires that we call distribution wires that actually take that electricity to our homes and to the final point where we consume it.”
