Almost immediately following the recent train derailment and toxic spill in Ohio, members of Congress angrily demanded answers from industry executives and regulators alike. The utility response to increasingly frequent transmission rebuilds has come to resemble Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing again and again expecting a different (or improved) outcome.
But recall that in hurricane alley, Entergy recently informed Louisiana regulators that the next category four hurricanes in their service area would likely disrupt electrical service for a month or more. The electric industry’s response to this increasing cycle of weather disruption followed by system repair is to basically reinforce the status quo with a reassuring, “Don’t worry, we’ll fix the grid better than before.” Implicit in this breezy reassurance is that power will be restored as quickly as possible.
Whether we call it weather or climate, utilities and other infrastructure providers face new challenges. Severe storms, fire, floods, snow, hurricanes - many often in the same places. Last year, 2022, was nowhere near as bad as 2021–the worst year of the 24-year record. Numbers are out again permitting us to update our US electric grid’s reliability report card.
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