IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2014 - 101

The poster session was well attended on all accounts.

integral to all three aspects of resilience, mcGranahan said.
Technology for damage assessment
that already exists, such as unmanned
aerial vehicles and customers with
mobile video capabilities, will increasingly be brought to bear on the problem,
in mcGranahan's view.
in fact, the integration of new and
existing technology is critical, the
ePRi executive said, and the field presents a "wide open R&d opportunity."
improving situational awareness could
yield the most benefit, mcGranahan
said, but cost/benefit analyses to optimize investments are needed.

Weathering the Storm
a well-attended super session, "managing extreme events," provided insights
that ranged from the impacts of recent
extreme weather events along the U.s.
eastern seaboard to the record-setting
blackout in india last year that affected
nearly 700 million people. in discussing the causes, impacts, and recovery
process, panelists touched on many
fundamental challenges facing the
power industry in the 21st century.
in the United states, several factors are combining to produce a "new
normal" in customer and regulatory
expectations for service, according
to panelists. customers are expecting
instant restoration after major storms.
Regulators are demanding intensely
january/february 2014

detailed, new recovery plans to hold
utilities accountable. eei mutual aid
rules are being circumvented by utilities, which are competing for crews
from other utilities. Yet the timeframe for grid modernization remains
lengthy, measured in decades.
it's well known that the three major
storms that struck the U.s. northeast
in 2011 and 2012 wreaked havoc with
millions of customers. but consider the
challenge in florida's hurricane alley,
where 90% of florida Power & Light's
(fP&L) 4.6 million accounts live within
20 mi of the coast, said Tom Gwaltney,
fP&L's director of central maintenance
and construction. The frequency of
severe storms over the past decade has
lead fP&L to revamp its vegetation and
asset management programs and institute an annual, two-day dry run to test
the training and readiness of the utility's
crews for major disasters, Gwaltney told
the audience. fP&L has also created a
distribution Performance and diagnostic center, devoted to collecting and
analyzing data in pursuit of predictive
intelligence for storm impacts and the
development of proactive policies.
cheri Warren, vice president for
asset management at national Grid,
described how, in the wake of the
extreme weather in the northeast in
2011-2012, including a rare tornado in
massachusetts in June 2011, her utility
developed an app(lication) for under

Us$100,000 that provides customers
and local government officials with
near-real-time data on the extent of outages and the status of restoration work.
national Grid has developed a Predictive storm damage modeling Tool
to help it prepare crews and allocate
resources even before an approaching
storm strikes.
The challenges of wide-scale
blackouts in developing nations are
considerably different, according to
s.c. srivastava, a professor of electrical engineering at the indian institute
of Technology-Kanpur, who analyzed
the July 2012 blackout that affected
nearly 700 million people in india.
a confluence of supply and load factors, a lack of intervention by operators and, possibly, faulty design in
protection and control schemes have
been implicated in the event, srivastava said. The sheer scale of the india
blackout was daunting: it affected
nearly 50% more people than the six
biggest blackouts of the past 50 years
combined.
Throughout the week-long General
meeting, attendees from both developed and developing nations around
the world shared the dais to offer lessons learned and exchange insights
borne of hard-won experience. Yet
their goal was the same: shaping the
future energy industry.
p&e

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2014