IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2020 - 92

in my view

Yingchen "YC" Zhang and Juan Torres

safeguarding the grid
diverse resources for resilience

F

FROM WILDFIRES, HURRICANES,
and floods to cyberattacks, the grid is
vulnerable to natural and human-made
disasters, which can cause widespread
outages that last from hours to months
and leave lasting economic impacts.
Imagine a coastal region in the United
States that has just been hit by a hurricane
and lost all power. Besides the electricity
infrastructure going out, communications networks, rail transportation, and
gasoline pumps may also stop working
after the emergency event, which often
delays repair efforts to the grid. Unresponsive communications make it difficult to dispatch workers to repair the
grid, and missing transportation links delay shipments of replacement equipment
for the grid's restoration.
On the other hand, imagine a modernized grid that has just been hit by
the same hurricane. This grid has
smart controllers, storage, distributed
generators, and demand response,
which work together to significantly reduce the length of a power outage and
decrease the restoration time of the full
grid. Designing a responsive energy
system is the solution to improving the
grid's resilience and minimizing the
damaging effects from storms, cybersecurity disruptions, and other threats.
Enhancing grid resilience is a two-step
process: 1) hardening the grid to mitigate the effects of widespread disasters
and 2) quickly restoring the grid to minimize downtime following emergencies.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2020.2985443
Date of current version: 17 June 2020

92

ieee power & energy magazine

Hardening the Grid With
Diversified Resources
Conventional grid-hardening investments have focused more on creating
stronger physical components that can
withstand significant natural disaster
impact from events such as hurricanes.
Examples of hardening the grid can
include utilities moving overhead lines
underground to reduce impact, building barriers and walls around substations to curtail flooding, and reinforcing the physical mounting of towers.
Weighing the cost of grid-hardening
investments against the benefits of a
more resilient electric infrastructure is
always a delicate task.
Utilities are increasingly using nonwire alternatives (NWAs) to diversify
the cost of upgrading infrastructure for
normal operations. These alternatives
can include storage, load management,
microgrids, and distribution generation. Although NWAs will not directly
prevent the infrastructure from being
destroyed by a disaster, because these
increasingly diversified technologies
help the grid become much flexible
and reconfigurable, power grids can
now sustain the impact from natural
disasters more effectively.

Marshaling Advanced
Forecasting Technologies
and Smart Controllers
One NWA technology for hardening
the grid is forecasting. Advancements
in data analytics methods, especially
artificial intelligence, enable shortand long-term forecasts to be more ac-

curate. Recent developments in these
forecasting techniques can quantify
uncertainties and assist grid operators
with accurately allocating and scheduling resources to maintain normal grid
operations. Meanwhile, this enhanced
forecasting technology becomes a
powerful tool to reduce the effects of
natural disasters on power systems as
well as assess the risk and quantify the
impact of component failures. Forecasting technology can also identify
resource availability, organize system
configuration, and schedule resources
to plan an accurate restoration path
with fast response measures.
Smart controllers are another NWA
that can keep the grid operational during an emergency event. Flexible alternating current transmission systems
controllers, smart switches, and other
controllers make it possible to reroute
the power supply to customers, even
while part of the bulk grid is still out
of service. The expertise provided by
forecasting combined with advanced
controllers reduces the investment cost
of grid hardening and is flexible for a
large variety of utility scenarios.

Mobilizing Distributed-Energy
Technologies
Research has also shown that instead
of purely relying on traditional power
networks to maintain resilience, the
demand side should become more
f lexible. For instance, a resilient
community with predictive household
(continued on p. 90)
july/august 2020



IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2020

Contents
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2020 - Cover1
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