Break the Storm, Outage, Repair, Repeat Cycle With Built-In Resilience
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Investing in resilient design principles and grid-edge technologies can break the cycle of storm, outage, repair, and repeat. This approach improves overall grid reliability and reduces long-term costs.
S&C’s Kumar Chandran discusses how we can design the distribution grid for proactive outage management and rapid restoration in his recent T&D World article “Design the Grid for the Day After the Storm.”
Here are a few excerpts:
“About 90% of outages happen in the distribution system, and 80% of these are temporary and caused by tree limbs, wildlife, or weather. Without automation, utilities dispatch crews into severe conditions to manually repair faults, resulting in longer outages and higher costs. With intelligent devices that automate and ‘self-heal’ the grid, these disruptions can be resolved within seconds—often before customers notice.
Why is this important? Because reacting to temporary events is expensive and inefficient. Every storm initiates a cycle of reacting, repairing, and rebuilding. But when we rebuild in the same way, without strategic investment in technologies proven to improve grid resilience, we lose the opportunity to disrupt the cycle, lower restoration costs, and ensure reliable electricity for businesses and communities alike.
But with strategic investment, we have the opportunity to build in resilience that provides proactive outage management and rapid restoration after the storm has passed.”