The North American Electric Reliability Corporation recently adopted new standards to make the grid more reliable in the face of extreme weather.
"The actions in front of us today show that NERC continues to make progress on addressing extreme weather challenges, resulting in ongoing reliability, but we must keep moving forward," Board Chair Ken DeFontes said.
The four new standards introduced will improve reliability overall, and two of them are particular to the shifting climate balance.
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Definitely 👍 The first ensures that planning entities are better prepared for the impacts of extreme hot and cold temperatures on the transmission system. The other requires new reliability assessments to evaluate contingency plans. Other projects provided new cybersecurity protections and new rules for categorizing risks. These new standards are pending federal approval, a spokesperson told Utility Dive.
NERC is a non-profit regulatory body that oversees bulk power transmission standards to 400 million people in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The improvements they make in standards affect electrical utilities of all stripes. As weather patterns become more severe and we advance on electrifying every part of society, we'll need to keep the grid as resilient as possible with rigorous oversight.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees NERC, has been busy upgrading regulations too. It's making utilities plan ahead for ballooning energy needs while also facilitating faster connection of new energy projects, including renewable sources.
Wide, top-down improvements like this are important, but we've seen lots of grid resiliency initiatives at the state level. Rhode Island enshrined energy storage with new protections not long ago, for example. Texas is leveraging smart thermostats to reduce usage when needed and effectively create a virtual power plant, and has fresh federal funds to make big upgrades. New Jersey received cash to upgrade lines and substations as well.
The U.S. grid still needs significant improvements, but by decarbonizing, we're already reducing future extreme weather strains it will be under.
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