"The idea is to limit the damage," Cooper said. "With sensors out there, we can identify and stabilize the problem, like the body does with clotting. Essentially, we contain the damage."
The safest place on the grid is ... off the grid?
Another way of containing the damage, or avoiding it entirely, is to reduce dependency on the grid, Cooper said. Microgrids, or power systems that generate part or all of their own power, are better insulated against the "cascade effects" that plague larger systems, he said.
During Sandy, a housing project in Brooklyn called Co-op City managed to keep its lights on even while the power went dark in the buildings around it, thanks to a 5-megawatt generator and an efficient thermal energy provisioning system, he said.
Not only does self-sufficiency protect the microgrid in question -- it can also lower demand on larger utilities.
"If the microgrid is producing power, they can shift some of that over to relieve pressure on the grid," Cooper said.
"The message I want to get out there is that there is an ecosystem approach that says we can work on this problem from both ends -- both customers and utilities can be working on this issue at once," he said.
EEI's Eisenbrey said that, while self-sufficiency would likely play a role in shaping the future grid, there is still work to be done in policy and planning before such strategies can be widely integrated.
"We as an industry are looking at some customers seeking to become more independent, and we believe there's a real role utilities can play in that," Eisenbrey said. "At the same time, there are regulatory and cost recovery issues we're interested in working through before [microgrids] come into vogue."
"Even if you're on a microgrid, and becoming self-sufficient, you're going to have to depend on your local utility as a backup system," he added. "That raises issues of costs being shifted to other consumers who are essentially paying for that grid as a battery backup."
Stronger doesn't necessarily mean harder
Such solutions, which are broadly grouped under the title "grid resilience," are relatively new to the debate on vulnerability. A more familiar line of debate concerns "grid hardening."
As its name implies, grid hardening aims to shore up the grid before problems occur, rather than shortening response time or containing damages.
The most oft-discussed technique in this vein is the burial of power lines. The practice is widespread in Europe and has contributed to a lower rate of outages in countries like Germany, which buries almost much of its transmission infrastructure.
Invariably, weather events that affect the grid are quickly followed by calls for the United States to follow suit. But as many experts have noted in the fallout from Sandy, much of the grid damage was sustained below ground, as flooded saltwater corroded lines and fuse boxes.
"When responding to natural hazards, you have to be very careful that you do your redesign in an all-hazards way rather than just against one storm," said Joel Gordes, president of the consultancy Environmental Energy Solutions. "Maybe burying power lines would help for one kind of storm, but what about floods in the future? Right now, too much of the time, we're looking at this on a storm-by-storm basis."
Eisenbrey agreed that burying power lines, while useful in some cases, is probably not a universal prescription for the grid.
"Utilities are looking into undergrounding for parts of the system, generally the most vulnerable parts," said Eisenbrey. However, both above-ground and below-ground power lines have advantages and drawbacks, he said. While more resilient to wind and falling trees, subterranean power lines are more vulnerable to flooding and require higher costs and longer periods to repair.
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15 Comments
Add CommentWhat is preventing all power companies to at least start implementing "smart meters"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimpler solution: BURY THE WIRES!!!
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the problems was the wires were buried in the subway tunnels !!
The sollution is having subgrids like 1 block size that supply much of their own power plus heat making generation 85% eff instead of at best 50% eff.
Plus they could supply all needed power during peak and use the utility supply off peak to save both money.
A 1 block unit can convert garbage, plastics, solar. wind, cogen ands share heat or A/C at 50% of the cost of utility power all the time. And give jobs making the plastics, garbage into fuels and power.
Not only could they supply the blocks electric and heat but transport fuels too. But utilities will fight it tooth and nail as it takes their power away.
Expense. Smart Meters are absurdly expensive the moment, despite largely being electronics.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJurgen where did you get your info from? I already have one which not only wasn't that expensive to the utility but much that rather small amountwas paid for by a gov program.
But the utility also gets great savings in labor, fuel because they just drive by instead of getting out and reading each meter. I expect they save enough in 1 yr to pay the extra cost and they are likely to last 20-30 yrs. Do the math.
And many other advantages help save the utilities manpower. They are well worth the rather small cost which is reflected in my billing charge not having to pay for the labor, etc saved.
Many people with "smart meters" are reporting significant INCREASES in their bills! Cha-ching.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWires hanging on poles will be susceptible to winds (and drunk drivers).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose who want bury the wires better be ready for higher costs and longer times to get repairs done when the do happen. Do you want that?
By far less expensive is as I said above have a mirco grid like a 1 block grid then wires can be in conduits and if the gird goes down the micro grid doesn't as it has it's own generating it can ramp up.
That's how you make reliability. Plus you have an in house repair person on call so any problems get fixed right away.
Sadly so many posting here have little knowledge of the subjects.
I would be interested in a coherent explanation why local utilities, particularly Con Ed, have not done more of what the article lists. I am thoroughly puzzled by the arguments I have heard elsewhere that burying lines is prohibitively expensive. I would have thought that Sandy repair costs will be prohibitively expensive. In the suburbs north of New York City, I would guess that buried lines would have cut outages and time to return to power by some 50-70%, as many of the line outages were trees falling on elevated power lines. Similarly with smart meters and other smart grid approaches: days would have been saved in repair (and administration) if the utility company didn't have to rely on customer contacts to determine what was out and what remained out after some key and trunkline repairs. What I find most puzzling is that the Governor of New York wants the Federal Government to pay for upgrading to a "smart grid," apparently because Con Ed has not sought to develop and invest in this, even though it would have saved substantial expenses over recent years in storm-consequence repairs. A PS to Quinn: in a previous storm we did not lose power until two days later when a contract repair crew inadvertently knocked down a perfectly good pole with a transformer on it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is needed for US utilities is a combination of transparency (Con Ed does not even share its maps with local police and fire officials) and intelligent planning. In some places burying lines (as is done within some of the newer high-end developments of single-family homes) makes sense; in low-lying areas, perhaps other strategies such as tree-pruning and minimizing distance from end-user to high-ground trunk lines might help.
For the moment, however, the reverse of orderly is happening - a rush on private dwelling generators, without any overall plan.
I would have expected better from companies that carry on the T.A.Edison legacy for inovation and planning.
The utility companies are lying and the public is buying it! Climate change is not an excuse to "deploy" poorly designed and dangerous "smart" transmitting Digital Utility meters (DU meters).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is nothing environmental about DU meters.
DU meters were designed and manufactured with a radiation emissions problem. The utility companies are lying about the safety of the meters.
In addition to storms, the grid is also highly vulnerable to sabotage. For more information on vulnerabilities of the grid and the potentially catastrophic consequences resulting from sabotage to it, see: http://operationcircuitbreaker.wordpress.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have read up a bit on this subject in a report in Oz, One thing that really sold me on the idea of smart metres was the fact that power plants are basically guessing what power we use at any moment. As such, they over-compensate by providing 100% power most of the time to cover their bases. With smart metres they will be able to see in real time what power is needed, and accordingly ramp down (or up) the output if demand lowers or jumps thus saving wasted power output! Which should translate to less burnouts of transformers & cheaper power bills. Why did they do this instead of the cableing, transformers first? Probably because it was the cheapest with the biggest return and quicker to implement. Seriously though.. losing 25% of your power in transmission is disgustingly inefficient. And being AC power you have to sync up all the power transmitted to differing phases and frequencies, if you want to "divert power" from one area to the next. These substations that sync up the different power grids lose energy in the process.. stupid! Honestly perhaps we should make the shift back to DC which would do away with the need for sync-up stations and the need for inverter boxes on every house with a solar system. Remember solar power is DC? And the storage problem, reminds me of a old Indian saying: "The best place to store you left-over food is in your neighbours stomach". Apply that to the Grid and we should connect all power grids across the world internationally together. We would never need storage as somewhere they would have too much wind or Solar and need a buyer. We can leave this bit to the free market to sort out the prices. Power loss you say? HVDC dude only loses 5% power every 1000km's thus making it economical to wire up the worlds grids. Might even stop a few wars being that we'd all become interdependent on each other.. Also would it kill you guys to switch to metric?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have read up a bit on this subject in a report in Oz, One thing that really sold me on the idea of smart metres was the fact that power plants are basically guessing what power we use at any moment. As such, they over-compensate by providing 100% power most of the time to cover their bases. With smart metres they will be able to see in real time what power is needed, and accordingly ramp down (or up) the output if demand lowers or jumps thus saving wasted power output! Which should translate to less burnouts of transformers & cheaper power bills. Why did they do this instead of the cableing, transformers first? Probably because it was the cheapest with the biggest return and quicker to implement. Seriously though.. losing 25% of your power in transmission is disgustingly inefficient. And being AC power you have to sync up all the power transmitted to differing phases and frequencies, if you want to "divert power" from one area to the next. These substations that sync up the different power grids lose energy in the process.. stupid! Honestly perhaps we should make the shift back to DC which would do away with the need for sync-up stations and the need for inverter boxes on every house with a solar system. Remember solar power is DC? And the storage problem, reminds me of a old Indian saying: "The best place to store you left-over food is in your neighbours stomach". Apply that to the Grid and we should connect all power grids across the world internationally together. We would never need storage as somewhere they would have too much wind or Solar and need a buyer. We can leave this bit to the free market to sort out the prices. Power loss you say? HVDC dude only loses 5% power every 1000km's thus making it economical to wire up the worlds grids. Might even stop a few wars being that we'd all become interdependent on each other.. Also would it kill you guys to switch to metric?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have read up a bit on this subject in a report in Oz, One thing that really sold me on the idea of smart metres was the fact that power plants are basically guessing what power we use at any moment. As such, they over-compensate by providing 100% power most of the time to cover their bases. With smart metres they will be able to see in real time what power is needed, and accordingly ramp down (or up) the output if demand lowers or jumps thus saving wasted power output! Which should translate to less burnouts of transformers & cheaper power bills. Why did they do this instead of the cableing, transformers first? Probably because it was the cheapest with the biggest return and quicker to implement. Seriously though.. losing 25% of your power in transmission is disgustingly inefficient. And being AC power you have to sync up all the power transmitted to differing phases and frequencies, if you want to "divert power" from one area to the next. These substations that sync up the different power grids lose energy in the process.. stupid! Honestly perhaps we should make the shift back to DC which would do away with the need for sync-up stations and the need for inverter boxes on every house with a solar system. Remember solar power is DC? And the storage problem, reminds me of a old Indian saying: "The best place to store you left-over food is in your neighbours stomach". Apply that to the Grid and we should connect all power grids across the world internationally together. We would never need storage as somewhere they would have too much wind or Solar and need a buyer. We can leave this bit to the free market to sort out the prices. Power loss you say? HVDC dude only loses 5% power every 1000km's thus making it economical to wire up the worlds grids. Might even stop a few wars being that we'd all become interdependent on each other.. Also would it kill you guys to switch to metric?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, my comment wasn't coming up on the sight.. tried three times.. my bad
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissite* ugh!
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