Severe storms slammed the southeastern United States in late September and early October. They came on the heels of a hot summer. Violent storms and extreme temperatures - both hot and cold - take a toll on our grid. Commentator Scott Carlberg says it's time to modernize our aging energy grid.
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What Record-Setting Storms Mean for Your Power System
By Scott Carlberg
Super storms are in the news. Milton just tore across Florida. Before that, Hurricane Helene barreled into the Southeast. The remnants of Helene spread clouds close to Kansas City, half a continent away.
A bad storm is no one-off. The polar vortex froze Kansas. The Greensburg, Kansas, tornado wiped out 95 percent of town. A weather map for last May 19 shows 176 severe thunderstorm warnings and 25 tornado warnings across the Great Plains. Tornado activity is more concentrated in more days with multiple tornadoes. Parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri have seen the most severe weather watches over the last 20 years.
Heat is the silent killer. Sunday, July 21, 2024, was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth.
A Kansas State University paper says, except for the Dust Bowl years, Kansas temperatures in last two decades have been among the warmest. Get this, the Kansas increase was chiefly driven by the rise in minimum temperatures. No chance to cool off at night.
These weather phenomena are not only bad for humans. They are energy disasters. What taxes our bodies also taxes our utility systems. But... we can do something about it. How can we strengthen systems against extreme weather?
- Harden the grid - with new materials, design and construction standards.
- Put outage-prone sections of the system underground.
- Use technology to enhance outage visibility and help restoration. Find weak links before they break.
There technologies are available now.
And we should be implementing these technologies sooner rather than later.
Without upgrades to the grid, power system repairs can be a whack-a-mole experience – fix it as it breaks. Over and over again.
Updating a grid that took the Twentieth Century to build is costly, time-consuming, and often politically unpopular. It's also kind of boring.
But improving the grid is important.
It's also a shared responsibility.
The National Council of State Legislators say that "state legislatures play a key role in the process of developing policies that contribute to energy security." State legislatures can signal support or opposition to certain policies and initiatives, like grid hardening or grid modernization. And Kansas has a spot on this national panel through a state rep from Emporia - Representative Mark Schreiber.
The news about our energy need is no surprise. The surprise would be a re-energized spirit of getting this done now... before the next disaster strikes. What can we do as citizens? Let our representatives know we need this kind of improvement to the grid. The next natural disaster is coming... even if we don't know when.
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Commentator Scott Carlberg has worked in energy industry communications for more than 40 years. His career includes work with the petroleum industry and the electricity industry. He's also worked for research, nonprofit and higher education organizations. He lives in Leawood.