Heatwaves and Windstorms stress power grids!

In these summer months, electrical demand from refrigeration and cooling needs skyrocket, and power companies struggle to meet the demand. In the past two years, a new twist has been added to this now familiar power balancing act: Wind Generation, and its unstable nature. Wind turbines have gotten much attention since the energy price surges of 2007, and each month more wind generation facilities come online, supplying clean, green power to our existing antiquated power system. So what's the catch? It's pretty fundamental - wind power ebbs and flows with the intensity of the local wind conditions at the generation facility.

Our aging power grid is most susceptible to sudden increases in load in a specific sector of the grid. The grid is really a distribution network, controlled by an enormously complex system of switches that attempt to maintain steady power levels across the system. When more power is consumed in one area, more power delivery must be directed to that sector to maintain proper operations. The same applies in reverse to power generation - when more power is created in one area, more must be transmitted away from the source to prevent overload. Recent windstorms in the northwest have demonstrated the effect of increased wind power on these distribution systems. Operators have been forced to adjust hydroelectric and nuclear power generation multiple times a day to accommodate sudden spikes in wind power generation.

The federal government has mandated that about 11 billion dollars be invested in 'smart-grid' technology to automate and improve our ability to redistribute power to meet both shifting demand, as well as shifting production. These improvements, due over the next decade, should help ward off a repeat of the northeast blackout of 2006, where a minor shutdown of a set of interstate transmission lines led to a catastrophic cascade of overloads, putting the lights out for hours for most of the east coast.

As we re-invent our energy infrastructure in the coming years, we are putting our existing grid to a new test, and we are at a new risk of blackouts. Once the lights go out, its too late to realize you are not protected.