Catastrophic Service Blackouts Can be Beaten by Local Distributed Power Islands

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--When it comes to power systems maintaining critical services when high-voltage systems are crippled, as in the recent power out disasters in the eastern U.S., what is small is considered sustainable, according to researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Illinois).

The researchers have devised a strategy to use local distributed electricity generation, distribution automation, and smart meters to form small electricity "islands" that would support critical social services in the event of a substantial disruption resulting from extreme weather, terrorism or other causes, reports "Homelands Security News Wire" (Locust Valley, New York).

A release from the Society for Risk Analysis reports that the U.S. military is taking steps to protect its power supplies in the event of a massive grid failure by adopting small, local energy technologies. California Governor Jerry Brown recently announced that he wants 12,000 megawatts (MW) of such power in his state.

In their study "Sustaining Critical Services During Extended Regional Power Blackouts," Carnegie Mellon researchers Anu Narayanan and M. Granger Morgan examined the incremental cost of adding distributed generation (DG) units and smart meters to a hypothetical community of 5,000 households covering an area of five square kilometers.

Scenarios vary based on whether a region has zero, limited or sufficient DG capacity. If enough DG units already exist, the cost includes the fee to purchase the options to acquire 350 kilowatts (kW) during a blackout. If the region has insufficient existing DG infrastructure, the costs of installing new units and providing maintenance are key.

Other considerations include the use of a public or private funding option and the probability of an extended regional blackout. The researchers estimate that the cost per household for implementing various DG scenarios would be $9 to $22 a year for risk probabilities ranging from 0.01 to 0.0001. Even the highest cost estimate is far less than the 1% of an assumed median household income of $50,000, providing support for switching to DG units. The potential costs to a community resulting from a large power outage also must be factored into decisions about whether to invest in these upgrades.

Community social services deemed "critical" could include a subset of community grocery stores, gas stages, cellular phone base stations, streetlights, police stations and schools. The limited power supply could be cycled between essential services, with time of day or night playing a role in allocations.

"There are currently a few obstacles to implementing such a strategy, including state laws that prevent the deployment of cost-effective combined heat and power (CHP) microgrids, and the lack of incentive for power companies to invest in such a system," Narayanan noted. "We have the technology to make our critical services less vulnerable to large blackouts. What we need now are the right policy initiatives to make it happen."

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