The US power grid's vulnerability to extreme weather events is a growing national security threat, several industry experts warned.
Twelve out of 15 primary defense installations in Texas lost power during a severe winter storm in February 2021 that brought the state's grid to the brink of collapse, Jonathon Monken, a principal at the consulting firm Converge Strategies, said during a Dec. 5 webinar hosted by the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE).
"That's a huge number," said Monken, who previously worked as senior director of system resilience for the 13-state PJM Interconnection LLC and serves as a major in the US Army Reserve. "Quite honestly, a lot of the conversations within the national security community and the Department of Defense specifically is that at this point, the way they view it is that if they want resilient power, if they want energy assurance, then they just have to bring it inside the fence line because they can't trust the grid anymore."
Monken said that mentality should worry policymakers because the US grid needs to meet the needs of critical defense customers. He noted that the most recent available data shows that US Defense Department installations experienced over 6,000 energy outages and recorded more than 3,000 days of lost power in fiscal year 2021. Nearly all US defense installations rely on the civilian electric grid, Monken said.
Those figures come as federal lawmakers and agencies seek to expand the nation's interregional electric transmission capability. Over the last decade, US interregional transmission development has lagged far behind China, Europe and South America.
Thomas Coleman, executive director of the Safe Grid Security Project, added that extreme weather risks could be compounded by a coordinated cyber and/or physical attack on the grid.
"When you look at a coordinated attack, and the possibility of a coordinated attack in conjunction with one of these prolonged periods of weather abnormality, we really do have a very serious risk," said Coleman, who was previously chief technical adviser at the North American Electric Reliability Corp. The organization develops and enforces mandatory grid reliability standards for US power system operators.
"A power grid risk is equivalent to a national security risk," Coleman said.
NERC's most recent winter reliability assessment found that all regions of the US have sufficient generation capacity headed into the 2023–2024 winter season. But the US bulk power system is still vulnerable to wide-area cold weather events, according to NERC.
Monken said one key problem with US power system planning is that it currently does not take national security considerations into account. "It just needs to be baked into the conversation in a more intentional way," he said.
Reliability planning is still largely focused on increasing generation reserve margins and adding capacity assets, Monken said, leaving "some very open-ended questions here about interregional transfer capability."
Elise Caplan, ACORE's vice president of regulatory affairs, cited a recent study by the consulting firm Grid Strategies LLC that found that sufficient interregional transmission between the PJM and Midcontinent ISO regions could reduce the need for generation capacity by 6,900 MW. Another study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that an average interregional transmission line will provide about $200 million in annual benefits, with half of that value accruing in just 10% of the line's operating hours.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is working to finalize a rule on long-range transmission planning and cost allocation that could require system planners to more fully account for those benefits.
FERC's proposed rule, issued in April 2022, set out a lengthy list of potential benefits for consideration, including reduced power outages, lower transmission congestion charges and access to lower-cost generation. In recent months, the agency has heard calls to strengthen its final rule by actually requiring the consideration of those benefits.
"We want to make sure that those are considered in these studies, so they are a basis for cost allocation," Caplan said.
Mark Olson, NERC's manager for reliability assessments, noted the organization is undertaking a two-year interregional transfer study required under a deal to raise the US debt limit. FERC has also opened its own proceeding on the matter, which will proceed in parallel to the NERC study, according to FERC Chairman Willie Phillips.
Olson acknowledged that many recent studies have highlighted the value of interregional transmission.
"What I think NERC brings to the table is our ability to work directly with the industry, use industry forecasts and projections, the latest information we have on what generation is coming onto the system and what the load forecasts are, and then involve those system planners to do that detailed planning," Olson said.
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