How to mitigate transmission risk before the next big blackout.
By now there has been much industry analysis and finger-pointing over what happened on Aug. 14. Will we get a definitive answer to why the lights went out in the Northeast, Midwest, and Canada? Even after we've identified all the causal factors, the most important question to be asking ourselves as an industry is, Why?
Reducing the risk of a repeat performance should be of vital interest to today's owners and operators of transmission assets. What can be done right now, rather than what can be accomplished years from now, should be the foremost question on the minds of CEOs and CFOs. After all, no matter how many fingers point at pending legislation, expanded infrastructure, and new technology, owners and operators are the ones who take the heat when power goes out in their service territories. Greater short-term due diligence is needed to mitigate the impending risks: legal and regulatory exposure, unrecoverable revenue during service interruption, and damage to regional economies.
A few major hurdles simply cannot be crossed in the short term. Pending legislation will take between months and years to pass, and even longer until associated financial incentives may be realized; and it will take billions to build new infrastructure and implement new technologies so wholesalers can freely wheel energy across the country. A host of environmental hurdles will delay action even further. But new legislation and bigger power lines, even if we had them tomorrow, won't solve the immediate problem: the threat of failure. These expensive, long-term solutions do not address the root problem of transmission operations and risk management. What can be done in the short term?
A few major hurdles simply cannot be crossed in the short term. Pending legislation will take between months and years to pass, and even longer until associated financial incentives may be realized; and it will take billions to build new infrastructure and implement new technologies so wholesalers can freely wheel energy across the country. A host of environmental hurdles will delay action even further. But new legislation and bigger power lines, even if we had them tomorrow, won't solve the immediate problem: the threat of failure. These expensive, long-term solutions do not address the root problem of transmission operations and risk management. What can be done in the short term?
No Major Investment
The common contributing factor to the recent blackout, based on investigations to date, is confusion-communication breakdowns both technical and human. This is not an external issue. Transcripts of telephone conversations, released by the House Energy Committee, show bewilderment after the first control room computer went down. "We have no clue," one operator said. Another, speaking to a regional controller at MISO just before the blackout, said, "We don't even know the status of some of the stuff around us."
Many solutions point outward toward regional or national groups that have closer oversight of operations, but we maintain that much can be solved by updating technology and by changing procedures followed within the operating companies. This fix is cheaper and much more immediate than huge investment in new power lines. The more urgent message is: Start now, because it won't be long until we face this problem again. How many days until next summer's heat wave? Or the first ice storm?
According to a recent Edison Electric Institute reliability report, 67 percent of outages are weather-related. (The majority of other known causes involve human or animal interference with lines, planned or otherwise.) It is the single greatest factor affecting load and supply, but it can be much more closely monitored. Currently this isn't happening; many transmission operations do not have access to the most sophisticated weather information available, nor do they have analytical tools to process the granular data.
How can risks be better managed from within? If operators could access and analyze detailed surface weather observations, they would be able to more reliably and efficiently operate assets. Operators could, with greater certainty, anticipate areas vulnerable to heat, lightning, or ice. Dynamic line rating systems and granular weather data lead to more accurate monitoring of specific transmission lines' capacity utilization. With improved load forecasts, operators would know more quickly and with greater certainty when weather was causing load deviations from schedule. During potential storm events, repair crews could be dispatched in advance with greater certainty, thus reducing outage duration and unrecoverable revenue loss. And, as interregional transmission of power continues to grow and to further strain existing infrastructure, operator access to weather conditions beyond the control area will become even more critical to successfully balancing power on the grid.
Implement Risk-Avoidance Technology And Processes
This weather example illustrates a recursive process that transmission organizations should be incorporating now into daily operations to reduce legal, regulatory, and economic risks. Intended as short-term risk mitigation, this process (see Figure 1) is designed to help transmission operators look just days ahead.
Now add more robust data and enhanced analytical tools to this four-step risk-mitigation process, and operations are unquestionably better prepared to anticipate inevitable transmission strains and take pre-emptive action (see Figure 2).
The steps are described in detail below, in terms of their data and technology underpinnings.
Better Monitoring: Watching What's Really Happening
As described in the weather example above, transmission operators require access to more accurate, illustrative data to gain a better picture of weather. The same goes for load, capacity, generation, and transmission data. Generation and transmission data from outside an operator's control area can provide access to changes in other companies' operations that may eventually impose risk to his or her own company.
Sean O'Leary, CEO of Genscape Inc., pointed out, "On Aug. 14, data from our sensors began showing imbalances forming as transmission lines failed. Generation went offline over two hours before the fatal cascading outage-it was a major indicator that something was wrong."
Atlanta-based Genscape provides data from more than 1,200 sensors that monitor key generation and transmission assets in real time. Access to, and analysis of, data like Genscape's might have allowed companies to isolate the problem before it affected such a large area.
Enhanced weather, generation, and transmission data are just a few examples of the types of improvements that need to be made in monitoring the operating condition of the systems.
Analyze and Synthesize: The Best Defense
All the data under the sun is of no use, of course, without efficient analysis and synthesis tools. Keep in mind that every control area needs to conduct this type of analysis, not only with information pertaining to their network, but to all those connected. Enhanced weather, generation, and transmission data can be used as inputs into dynamic capacity models that provide real-time, detailed views of capacity and utilization. More granular data also would improve load model accuracy, as well as short-term neural network-based models and medium-term statistical models.
Analysis takes raw data and applies it to specific models and criteria to present basic information on the condition of the transmission systems. This is where a rigorous process stops in most companies. Synthesis-the systematic combining of analyses to gain complete understanding of the operational condition of the transmission grid-also is needed. Most analytics used by utilities today are developed in-house, but there are many decision-support tools in industrial as well as academic development.
Dan Saaty, an independent consultant in decision theory and analysis, explains. "It is almost impossible for a single person or group of people to make optimal decisions when dealing with systems as large, complex, and fast-moving as the electric transmission system," he says. "A tested, rigorous process is needed to make these efficiently and ultimately, to meet with successful results." Saaty uses an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to synthesize the analysis required to make complex and potentially costly (or risky) decisions.
Develop Hair-Trigger Reaction Times
Efficient, real-time analysis must lead to reactions in kind. In the near term, this means implementing an organizational decision-making process that makes efficient use of analysis results.
However, technological upgrades in this area are imminent. There is no time for even a split-second delay in responding to the most critical problems. New technology in digital switching-for instance, technology currently being developed by an EPRI consortium to operate at light speed-would make much better use of the current infrastructure. And while the implementation of digital switching will be costly, it is nothing compared with rebuilding the grid-$50 billion, as estimated by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. And it's a bargain compared with the annual cost of outages to the economy.
Enhanced alerting and communication systems may be a faster, more simple improvement. Custom alerting systems, which allow administrators to instantaneously broadcast alerts to networks of professionals, may allow for the specific one-to-many type of communication needed when reporting critical system status information. Would the Aug. 14 blackout have been better handled if everyone at ITC, First Energy, MISO, AEP, TransElect, and other affected entities had been notified of the system condition at the same time?
The Master Plan
The planning stage makes use of information gathered and actions taken during previous stages, in preparation for future similar events. This places value on constant learning within a transmission operation. Again, the intended cycle time for this entire risk-mitigation process is hours or days.
An example of planning, sticking with our example above, would be to document the response experience to a single, extreme weather event in a specific part of a service territory, then consider alternative courses of action that may have improved the outcome: reduced outage duration, faster problem identification, etc. The documented event must then be readily available to operators and field crews for reference when the next one occurs within that immediate locale. Sensitivity analyses of load and capacity forecasts are needed to better assess reserve margins and prepare for the future.
A Worthwhile Effort
After the events of Aug. 14, it's hard to imagine that any transmission operation could afford not to take deliberate steps of risk mitigation. It could be considered irresponsible if transmission owners and operators chose to maintain the status quo while legislators and pundits debate long-term, costly courses of action, especially when fairly straightforward action can be taken to mitigate legal, regulatory, and financial risks. And reducing risk is only one side of the benefit coin; by implementing some of the short-term process and technology solutions suggested above, transmission companies can improve asset valuation by planning more efficiently to maintain a consistent, high flow of electricity within industry parameters, as well as improve customer satisfaction through uninterrupted service.
CEOs and CFOs should continue asking themselves: What events during the next 30, 60, or 90 days will strain transmission? Take stock of the data currently being used by transmission operations and assess how its quality can be enriched by other available data sources. Compare the analytical and planning tools currently employed by your organization versus those available, and identify those that will specifically bolster your organization's ability to manage risk. Ensure existing and new information systems are maintained under rigorous security standards. Incorporate an iterative process in your own control room and field operations that encourages planning, internal communication, and pre-emptive action.
It is critical for energy providers to begin thinking of reliability in terms of days rather than years, and that they roll out simple programs and enhance technology now to protect assets, as well as customers. Undue transmission strain will occur again soon, and at the end of the day, regulators and investors aren't the ones held directly responsible for keeping the lights on.
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