NERC released its 2022 State of Reliability report in July, underlining the major challenges it sees facing the electric grid. While this is post is not intended to be a complete summary of the report, it highlights the major drivers, and you can find more information here:
https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/PA/Performance%20Analysis%20DL/NERC_SOR_2022.pdfÂ
In 2021, the top 10 most severe grid misoperations were caused by extreme weather, highlighting the challenges we will face as we transition away from fossil generation and integrate the forecasted 500GW of solar and 400 GW of wind generation on the US power system over the next 10 years. In order to accomplish this shift, the report highlights the need to:
- Invest in natural gas as a bridge resource, modeling both plausible and extreme natural gas disruptions,
- Focus on reliably integrating inverter-based resources,
- Resolve the major permitting challenges present in building transmission lines,
- Build significantly more interregional transmission to enable different regions of the country to share power when grid conditions become tight,
- Stay ahead of the "relentlessly" evolving cybersecurity risks.
The complexities that lie ahead for operators of the bulk electric system continue to expand - predicting Mother Nature's extreme events, incorporating changing fuel sources, and anticipating cybersecurity threats, all while building out a transmission system that has 2-3 times today's capacity. To be sure, these are challenges, but this is also a very exciting time to be in an industry undergoing such significant transformation.