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Society is more and more depending on electrical energy for important companies. The Power Data Administration (Brief Time period Power Outlook) and plenty of utilities are projecting surging electrical energy demand from information facilities and new manufacturing services, resulting in anticipated all-time highs in nationwide electrical energy consumption.
To successfully serve rising energy wants, electrical energy grids should be resilient to pure and human-caused hazards — storms, floods, droughts, excessive temperatures, freezes, hurricanes, sea degree rise, wildfires, seismic occasions, and cyber and bodily assaults. Particularly, growing frequency and severity of utmost climate occasions pose unprecedented challenges to grid resilience, outlined as the flexibility to arrange for, adapt to, stand up to, and get better quickly from disruptions to mitigate impacts (Presidential Coverage Directive 21). Extra billion-dollar disasters occurred in 2023 than another yr on report. All 50 states have been impacted by at the least considered one of these occasions prior to now 10 years (NOAA).
Important progress has been made to enhance grid resilience prior to now decade. Berkeley Lab’s new report, , is a useful resource for states and utilities to proceed to advance resilience planning processes within the context of quickly altering dangers and applied sciences to handle them.
As of June 2024, 14 states and one metropolis require electrical utilities to file resilience plans (Determine 1). Whereas state necessities primarily concentrate on investor-owned utilities, in some states directives additionally apply to rural electrical cooperatives, municipal utilities or each.
From Might 2022 to June 2024, at the least 30 utilities filed a number of resilience plans beneath necessities that Berkeley Lab recognized. These plans apply to over 47 million utility prospects, with the goal to enhance grid resilience for roughly 130 million individuals, or 39% of the U.S. inhabitants.
Drawing on state necessities and utility filings, Berkeley Lab’s new report summarizes rising finest practices and provides an ordinary template that states and utilities can adapt to satisfy their very own wants primarily based on coverage targets, regional hazards, and utility infrastructure and processes in scope. Key components of the template embrace a vulnerability evaluation (see framework in Determine 2), description of proposed resilience packages, and projected prices and charge impacts. Whereas the main target of the template is on excessive climate occasions, it additionally incorporates extra threats together with cyber and bodily assaults and seismic occasions. Utilities can use the template even within the absence of state resilience planning necessities.
Josh Schellenberg and Lisa Schwartz authored the report. The U.S. Division of Power’s Workplace of Power Effectivity and Renewable Power supported this work.
Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory, U.S. DOE Workplace of Science nationwide laboratory managed by the College of California.
Contact: Lisa Schwartz, Berkeley Lab’s Power Markets and Coverage Division
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