GRID RESILIENCEStrengthening Puerto Rico's Power Grid
The 2017 Hurricane Maria made a direct hit on Puerto Rico in 2017, it ravaged the island’s power grid and caused the longest blackout in U.S. history. Maria left many residents without power for nearly a year. As more hurricanes threaten, Puerto Rico utilities are shoring up their defenses using the Electrical Grid Resilience and Assessment System (EGRASS) planning tool.
When Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm with 155-mph winds, made a direct hit on Puerto Rico in 2017, it ravaged the island’s power grid and caused the longest blackout in U.S. history. Maria left many residents without power for nearly a year.
In the aftermath of this devastation, the Department of Energy and its national laboratory system partnered with Puerto Rico to generate a more resilient power grid to keep the lights on in communities and to protect against the worst consequences of new hurricanes.
Now, DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has delivered a solution to a more resilient power grid with the Electrical Grid Resilience and Assessment System (EGRASS), a powerful platform that helps prepare and fortify critical structures as new threats are identified.
“It is very important for Puerto Rico to prepare for this and the next hurricane season,” Power Systems Engineer Marcelo Elizondo said. “In order to tackle this, we combined our expertise in grid modeling, cloud architecture and emergency response to help protect Puerto Rico’s current and future power systems,” Elizondo added. “We validated our model in site damage assessment reports that allowed us to gain more accurate ability in predicting grid failure.”
The development of this software was possible thanks to funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and it will help the island be better prepared with proper action plans and materials when facing big storms in the future.
“Our Interagency Recovery Coordination division at the FEMA Puerto Rico recovery office worked tirelessly to reach the interagency agreement that paved the way for this innovative technology. Knowing the potential impacts of a future storm will help local governments make sound determinations when preparing for a post-landfall scenario,” said the FEMA Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinator in Puerto Rico, José G. Baquero.
The Puerto Rico Energy Power Authority (PREPA), and the operator and administrator of the Transmission and Distribution System in Puerto Rico, LUMA Energy, are now using EGRASS to study and plan for extreme weather events and potential impacts on the grid, to better expose data and knowledge gaps in the system and to use that information to protect critical infrastructure.
