The world is increasingly beset by severe weather events: heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires. Overall extreme events are impacting on power supply and distribution networks. Utilities are having to plan extensively about how to maintain electricity during emergencies.
One important aspect of this is ensuring that the utility can install a flexible demand response system ahead of any crisis, which can ensure a rapid load-management intervention. This can free up valuable resources for utilities, allowing them to shift those resources to other areas during large scale disasters. This article looks at three challenges in these circumstances and how to mitigate any disruption.
Responding to Localized Grid Damage
Severe weather usually harms the most vulnerable components of the grid: poles, lines and transformers. Customer loads need to be modulated to match reduced grid capacity until power can be rerouted or distribution assets can be repaired or replaced. This requires information about the entire grid and input from sensors located throughout.
Geographic grouping of demand response resources (at the substation level or other grid sections) can enable faster dispatch of these resources when grid assets are damaged. It’s important to have planned for how much load each group can reliably shed under various conditions. Then grouped resources can be matched to the need for power in other grid sections. This can help prevent outages from spreading and reduce overall grid stress to speed recovery as repair crews restore damaged plant and equipment.
Throttling Demand To Counter Supply Shortages
When generation or transmission gets knocked down, judiciously distributing the remaining power on the grid can help keep customers safe until new power supply can be brought online. This involves more widespread load-management strategies across larger areas. This is often the case during serious weather events, or in Texas in February 2021, when large elements of the system went down. When the whole power system is running short on supply, that’s when you want to dispatch from the entire demand response program. Grid operators also usually find it most effective when the reduced load is consistent across the entire duration of the event.