Emergency preparedness and disaster prevention require planning, equipment and communication. This applies to extinguishing fires and to maintaining the electricity system in extreme weather.
Firefighters have strategic plans regarding the area they need to address, as well as operational plans. The equipment includes fire trucks, protective equipment and hoses. First responders must share communications so they can coordinate when an emergency requires more than one department. This routinely happens when fire departments from multiple cities respond to a multiple alarm fire and provide mutual aid.
Electric utilities also have mutual aid agreements, equipment for generating and supplying electricity, and a lot of planning. Getting the net ready to work in extreme weather depends on all of these things. In recent years, policymakers and planners have begun to deal with the effects of extreme cold and extreme heat. This, rather than the damage to wires and consequent power outages from tornadoes, floods and hurricanes, is the subject of new attention.
Wildfire smoke in Portland, Oregon. Image courtesy of Joe Wachunas.
Electric utilities began to find economies of scale and operational efficiencies early in the twentieth century by consolidating adjacent service areas. Transmission lines connecting more power plants and cities increased reliability and reduced costs by allowing the sharing of reserves needed for one set of customers.
Power grids are subject to equipment failure or failure, so there has always been some recognition of backup facilities and the flexibility needed to meet changing conditions of both supply and demand. Multi-utility, multi-state power pools took this sharing and mutual aid to a more formal level, enabling both planning and operations under a clear structure that benefited all participants. Today’s regional transmission organizations, such as the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the Southwest Power Pool, ISO-New England and PJM are multi-state, multi-utility network operators.
For much of the 120-year history of electric utilities, regional reliability standards and coordinated operations have been voluntary. It wasn’t until the 2003 power outage in the northeast that federal law required reliability standards to be mandatory and include inescapable penalties.
Firefighting was also offered for more than a century on a private opt-in, pay-participant basis. The problems of “free-riders” who take advantage of fire protection without paying, and the increased fire risk from spotty participation that creates incomplete protection, eventually led to municipal fire brigades being established as public institutions, supported by combined public funds for the benefit of from everyone.
Today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) asks how grid operators and planners evaluate the risks of extreme heat, cold and drought — hazards that can create system-wide problems for the power grid. In addition, regulators are seeking to plan for more equipment for large-scale emergencies (eg, transmission between regions) and better communication (eg, shared assumptions, faster resource sharing) between utilities across service area boundaries.
Setting standards and requiring consistent, shared communications are sensible precautions for utilities to take against the massive outages we’re seeing from extreme heat, cold and drought. Returning to the fire service analogy, the regulation of fire risks through building codes and safety standards has saved countless lives by preventing fires in the first place.
Since utilities do not share modeling assumptions, have not established minimum standards for inter-regional capacity sharing, or have not even established a generally accepted risk assessment for large-scale outages due to extreme weather, the risks of extreme weather are exacerbated with significant consequences by the inaction of utilities.
Amid calls for action to increase network reliability, we must not be overwhelmed by alarmist rhetoric either. Monopoly utilities make more profit from bigger investments, so the incentive is to spend, spend, spend. Standards are needed to both provide a reliable system and protect taxpayers from excessive costs.
For more than 50 years, states have had a reliability standard that dampens the impulse to guarantee reliability at all costs and saddle taxpayers with the exorbitant cost of “gilding” the system. That standard says, “the probability of the load exceeding the available generation capacity should not exceed one day in ten years on average.”
The “one day in ten years” standard is set by the government agencies with authority over this important public health and safety issue. The recent Summer Resource Assessment by NERC (the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation) has been widely quoted and exaggerated for its claim that MISO is at risk of undersupply if demand is higher than normally forecast (notably an expected demand level of only 10%, or one-to-10, probability).
That is true, but it should be noted that the risk of insufficient supply has decreased from one day in ten years to one day in 5.6 years. Should this be a call to action? And it is. But it should not be an excuse for alarming rhetoric or, worse, a call to turn back the clock on our efforts to modernize the electricity supply. NERC also failed to emphasize that the risk of MISO was based on using 54% less capacity from neighbors than last summer. (See pages 14 and 16.)
Sensitive planning, replacement of old equipment and effective communication offer major advantages for both fire protection and grid reliability. Hyperbole, like screaming in a crowded theater, only causes damage. FERC is working on numerous approaches to unravel some of the bad practices that are modernizing and upgrading the network. It’s not hard to find bad old practices and 50-year-old power plants running on 90-year-old designs in our electrical system.
New transmission, new power plants, better attitude and less defense of old kingdoms will help us through the energy transition. Let’s continue with the changes.
By Mike Jacobs
Originally published by Union of Concerned Scientists, The Equation.
Featured photo: Simulated electric fire training at the Center for Naval Engineering Firefighting School. Image: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class James R. Evans/US Navy
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