Rebuilding better electrical grids in disaster zones
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Rebuilding better electrical grids in disaster zones By Scott Litzelman
T
ry, for a moment, to imagine having no power at your home. After Hurricane Florence made landfall in the Carolinas on September 14, more than 800,000 people lost power, some of them for more than a week. September also marked the first anniversary of Hurricanes Irma and Maria making landfall in the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, where some customers lost power for nearly a year. Hurricanes Maria and Irma were responsible for nearly 3000 deaths, more than USD$100 billion in damage, and one of the worst electrical blackouts in the history of Puerto Rico; the island is still grappling with the aftermath of those storms. The increasing frequency and severity of storms, such as Maria, Irma, and Florence, are forcing policymakers and electrical grid operators to consider how they can increase the resilience of electrical systems so they can remain online during a storm or recover from an outage more quickly. Materials-enabled technologies
are playing an important role in these discussions. Soon after Maria knocked out power to all of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million inhabitants, residents, energy experts, and policymakers started calling for the island’s grids to be rebuilt with newer technologies, incorporating photovoltaics (PVs), wind turbines, and grid-scale batteries. Unfortunately, the recovery was not that simple, and reasons abound for the length of time it took to restore power. Puerto Rico was unprepared for a storm of that magnitude, as the transmission and distribution networks had been poorly maintained. Power was generated at centralized power plants running off fuel oil and liquefied natural gas, largely on the south side of the island. Most of the load, however, was concentrated in the cities to the north, and the transmission lines that connected power supply to demand were destroyed by the storm. Several policy factors also slowed the recovery. The agency responsible
Tesla’s solar power system generates electricity for Hospital del Niño in San Juan that serves about 3000 children across the island of Puerto Rico. Before the system installation, the hospital was forced to run off generators and ration diesel fuel. Photo credit: Tesla, Inc.
for leading the relief efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), operates under authority from the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act), which specifies that funds can only be used for the immediate rebuilding of infrastructure up to the most recent codes, not for long-term improvements. Post-Maria, some people misinterpreted the Stafford Act, thinking that an electrical system built in the 1950s would be rebuilt as an electrical system from the 1950s. In reality, the electrical system would be rebuilt according to current IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) codes and standards. However, FEMA claimed that it lacked statutory authority under the Stafford Act to undertake a broader remaking of Puerto Rico’s grid with dist
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