POWER January 2023 - 5

SPEAKING OF POWER
Enhancing and Hardening
the U.S. Power Grid
Aaron Larson
t's no secret that the U.S. power grid
needs some work. According to the
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),
nearly 70% of the nation's grid is more
than 25 years old. The DOE says the U.S.
needs to expand electricity transmission
systems by 60% by 2030-and may
need to triple current capacity by 2050-
to accommodate the country's growing
renewable energy sector and meet increasing
power demand for electric vehicles
(EVs) and electric home heating.
On Nov. 18, the Biden administration,
through the DOE, announced $13
billion in new financing opportunities
for the expansion and modernization of
the nation's electric grid. Funded by the
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Grid
Resilience Innovative Partnership program
and the Transmission Facilitation
Program together represent the largest
single direct federal investment in critical
transmission and distribution infrastructure
ever.
" We are moving swiftly to deliver
I
cleaner, cheaper energy to every American
community by building a modern
and reliable electric grid, " U.S. Secretary
of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said in
the funding announcement.
What's Being Done by Utilities
To get a better feel for what's needed-
and what's actually being done-I spoke
to Mike Edmonds, Chief Commercial
Officer with S&C Electric Company, a
113-year-old company with global headquarters
in Chicago, Illinois, that specializes
in the switching,
protection, and
control of electric power systems. Edmonds
said a lot is already being done by
power companies to enhance and harden
grid operations.
" We're definitely seeing two very
strong trends from the utility industry
right now, " he said in his British accent,
although he noted he's lived in the
U.S. for more than two decades. " One
is around undergrounding. The other involves
so called lateral protection or the
lateral side, so as you move away from
the substation toward the consumer. "
January 2023 | POWER
Edmonds suggested that if you went
back 15 years or so, the market for undergrounding,
pad-mounted gear was
driven by housing starts, but today it's
been reinvigorated to improve system reliability
and resiliency. He said both new
and retrofitted systems are incorporating
more underground and pad-mounted
equipment, some replacing equipment
that's 40 years old or more.
Concerning
lateral protection,
Edmonds
provided a simple explanation of
the concept, using his own home as an
example. " My personal house here in
Texas has a transformer outside fed by a
fuse that's on the end of a so-called lateral
or single-phase, " he said. " When we
think about that part of the grid where all
those revolutionary things are coming to
us, such as EVs and rooftop solar, they get
connected at that lateral side. We're seeing
continued adoption of technology that
can actually mitigate outages from temporary
faults, can rapidly rebuild the grid, can
keep the grid on through a storm-we've
seen examples of that in Florida and other
places. And if devices do trip out on a permanent
fault, they can quickly be put back
in a very straightforward manner. "
What's Being Done in the C&I
Space
A large part of S&C's business also
comes from the commerical and industrial
(C&I) sector. " We've seen a fairly
substantial uptick in the need to provide
switching and protection gear for data
centers, " Edmonds said. " So, that seems
to be a trend that's strong and will continue
to be strong. "
Like utilities, C&I companies are faced
with supply chain issues. S&C is, of
course, part of that supply chain, so Edmonds
sees what companies are doing
to overcome these constraints. " They're
ordering ahead and starting to get reservations
in earlier, " he said. Thus, proper
planning is more important than ever.
S&C has also seen an increase in
purchases of equipment to support
EV charging systems. " We've actually
started to see on the medium-voltage
side, which for us that's 4,000 volts
www.powermag.com
and upwards, we're starting to see
direct purchases for our equipment to
put in campuses of electric infrastructure
to get ready for charging needs, "
Edmonds said. " Because obviously
those charging needs are going to be
fairly substantial. "
The growth in EVs presents significant
challenges for the grid. " There'll
be an expectation from the manufacturers
and buyers of electric transportation
that you can simply plug your EV
into the grid. So, we're going to have
to make sure the grid is ready for that.
Otherwise, you'll be pretty disappointed
you bought your nice new GMC Sierra
Denali EV truck, got it delivered in
2024, and realize you can't actually find
a 325-kW DC charger. "
Areas Requiring More Attention
There's a tremendous amount of work
to be done. The North American Electric
Reliability Corp. (NERC) said in its
2022 State of Reliability report that there
are 511,099 transmission circuit miles
of greater than 100 kV. There are literally
millions of miles more of low-voltage
power lines and distribution transformers
in the U.S. grid, and therein lies perhaps
the biggest challenge to reliability
and resiliency.
" I still feel that the distribution grid itself
should have more attention than it's
getting, " said Edmonds. " I was part of a
working group on the West Coast for EVs
and their impacts on reliability of the grid,
and everyone was talking about transmission,
which is right to talk about, but I just
asked the innocent question: Where does
the EV connect to? Is it 132 kV? Is it 230
kV? No. It connects ultimately to medium
voltage, " Edmonds explained.
" So, why that's important is: to have
a strong, powerful, resilient transmission
grid, there's the other piece of this,
and we've got to continue to focus on
really improving and revolutionizing the
distribution grid, " he said. " So, I feel passionate
that we're still not quite talking
enough about that. " ■
-Aaron Larson is POWER's
executive editor.
5
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POWER January 2023

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