The massive energy crisis in Texas does not have to happen, experts say – and it does not have to happen again. Authorities can now start working on solutions that can prevent future blackouts. But unless the state starts working quickly, its energy system will be vulnerable to the next shock.
To begin with, the Texas grid needs to prepare for more blows of extreme weather, and the change can’t stop there. Upgrading homes and buildings is a simple way to keep people safe during disastrous conditions like this week’s cold moment. Efforts for emergency response also need an update.
Michael Bates, general manager of Energy at Intel, lives in Austin where he and his mother have not had power for three days. “She is 86 years old and lives like a pioneer in front of the fireplace,” says Bates. “It simply came to our notice then. There is technology today that, if we deploy properly, the pain will go away next time. ‘
Assets are working on developing smart grid technology at Intel that can figure out where energy is wasted so that power can be deployed where it is needed in a crisis. For example, there was outrage over empty brightly lit skyscrapers that threatened downtown Houston Monday night while more than 1.3 million people across the city were on hand. Aid programs said some neighborhoods avoided avoidance because they were close to hospitals or other critical infrastructure that needed to retain power. The uneven distribution of interruptions will not be a problem with a smart network, Bates says. “With laser, scalpel-like precision, you can turn the building lights on or off … and avoid having to do the obscuration by connecting the assets in real time.”
This type of network upgrade can also make it easier to extract energy from distributed resources such as residential solar panels or even electric vehicles. When paired with batteries and grids, renewable energy sources can be equivalent to or even better than the system we now have that relies on fossil fuels. ‘The industry may see this as very disruptive, but the solutions and the technology are not that complicated. They exist today; is that how we can apply it to this problem? says Bates.
Other solutions depend on reconsidering Texas’ energy and infrastructure policies rather than adopting new technologies. The state’s energy system could do even more to defend its system against the cold – something that was recommended after similar colds caused by cold in 2011 and 1989. Frozen gas wells and pipes were a major culprit behind the current disruptions, although authorities knew they were vulnerable to icy temperatures.
The Lone Star State also adheres to its moniker in terms of its energy infrastructure. The grids of other states are interconnected, so one state can use force from another state when needed. This is not the case in most of Texas. “There are parts of the network on the East Coast or the West Coast that currently have excess power that they can sell to us, but we simply can not succeed,” says Joshua Rhodes, a researcher. collaborator at the University of Texas at Austin. “Maybe we should be better connected to other parts of the US.”
An improvement in the power grid in Texas – whether it’s smarter or connects to the rest of the state – should begin soon. “If we had such a storm again in two weeks, we would probably have done exactly the same thing. It sometimes takes years and decades to build infrastructure, ”says Rhodes. “We have to start now.”
Disaster management plans, on the other hand, can change much faster and can achieve the same goals as attempts to upgrade the network. “Focusing sometimes on dealing with emergencies in terms of providing services to people is perhaps more productive than sometimes thinking about specific network upgrades,” says Emily Grubert, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Some of it is simple and is already underway. During this storm, communities opened up ‘warm-up centers’ where people could hide in a place with heating when their power was at home. This is similar to a strategy many cities use during heat waves; they open “cooling centers” where people can gather for free air conditioning.
Defending homes is another easy way to keep people safe in future weather disasters, Grubert and Rhodes say. The added benefit is that better insulation is protected against extreme temperature fluctuations in both directions. This is an important consideration, as climate change is generally sending Texas in the direction of more extreme heat, not extreme cold.
Ultimately, protecting people from destructive power outages in the future is necessary to anticipate new catastrophes – not just to respond to the past. “We tend to see this a lot with infrastructure systems where we have one emergency and we want to respond to basically prevent this particular emergency from happening again,” says Grubert. ‘I think what I would rather see us focus on after this event is really think about how we respond to emergencies. There will always be something we have not prepared for. ”