In the US, it isn’t uncommon for people to experience extended power outages after natural disasters or major storms. With climate change potentially pushing that number up further, utilities and regulators need to revisit how they approach weather related blackouts, and reconsider how they establish resilience, according to an article in Fast Company.
Currently, power grids are designed with the idea of redundancy in energy generating and transmission capacity, with the assumption that the main risk is equipment overloads or random failures. With weather events, however, that type of redundancy is challenged, as a single major storm can overwhelm an entire region.
Instead, providers may want to restructure their approaches to:
- Recognize redundancy in capacity can’t necessarily protect against outages when an entire region is affected
- Consider the use of temporary measures after a major event, like solar panels, batteries, or generators to get basic service back up, until full scale repairs can be performed
- Understand these major events are going to become more common, and build them into their future planning
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