Hurricane Matthew tested electric grid’s storm resistance
Hurricane Matthew has shown that efforts by utilities and the U.S. government to make the nation’s electric grid more storm-resistant are paying off, according to Rebecca Smith in The Wall Street Journal. Those efforts, she reports, began in 2008 and will account for $32 billion by 2017. The investment includes a $4.5 billion stimulus package passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2009.
The upgrades include systems designed to resist wind, flying debris, and flooding. For example, sensors can provide an early warning of flooding, so equipment can be powered down to minimize damage, and “reclosers” can re-energize power lines after temporary faults caused by tree limbs brushing against them. In addition, 65 million digital meters can help instantaneously pinpoint outages, Smith reports, and new switchgear can isolate problems and route power transmission around trouble spots.
Nevertheless, more than 2 million households lost power at various times as Hurricane Matthew moved slowly though Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia. “Still,” Smith writes, “some experts said the storm likely would have wreaked more havoc on electricity systems along the Atlantic coast, if not for the grid upgrades.”
She quotes Eric Silagy, Florida Power & Light’s chief executive, as saying, “The investment we’ve made is starting to show a real payback to customers.” Jeff Rogers, a Gulf Power spokesman, adds, “Now, a lot of our system is kind of self-healing.” Gulf Power serves 450,000 metered customers in North Florida.
Smith cites a federal report indicating that it would cost more than $300 billion to modernize the grid across the U.S., compared with the $35 billion to $55 billion annual costs of storm related outages to the U.S. economy.
She concludes by writing, “One federal analysis found the whole economy benefits from smart grid spending. For every $1 million in direct spending, GDP grows $2.5 million to $2.6 million.”
