When I was in grad school, my job was to drive instrument towers to the coast when a hurricane was coming so we could collect high-frequency wind data that we could study to learn about how to make buildings more resilient to wind storms like hurricanes.
I drove to a lot of tropical cyclones for that project, so when I drove from New Braunfels to Austin on Sunday afternoon and noticed two different hotel parking lots packed full of electrical utility trucks I knew it was line workers from other parts of the state and the country prepositioning in south central Texas in anticipation of the need for repairs after Hurricane Beryl.
Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Matagorda Bay as a Category 1 storm with eighty mile-per-hour winds. It moved inland over the Houston metro area and then continued moving north-northeast through the Ark-La-Tex. The storm resulted in an electricity outage for two-million customers. Some customers are still waiting to be reconnected more than three days later, creating dangerous conditions as temperatures rise into the upper nineties after the storm.
Prepositioning line workers in advance of a hurricane is a smart way to prepare for an imminent landfall. Once the winds die down, trucks and workers can be deployed to the places they are needed most and start repairs right away.
In what other ways can Texas prepare for hurricanes and tropical storms, given this is expected to be a much more active hurricane season than normal? How can residents, businesses, and planners prepare now so that the impact of a landfalling hurricane is the least disruptive it can be?
How can grid operators prepare for a future when disruptive weather events are projected to become more frequent and more intense?
Beryl is a reminder that it doesn’t take a major (Category 3 or higher) hurricane to cause significant disruption to the lives of coastal residents. Even without widespread structural damage or flooding, prolonged loss of electrical power drives economic loss, wasted food, and the risk of serious heat-related illness.
Houston is one of the largest cities in the country and sits right next to the hurricane-prone Gulf coast of Texas. It is time for planners and state leadership to recognize the increasing risk of intense tropical cyclones and sea level rise due to climate change and plan accordingly. State leadership must consider multiple realities at the same time in this coming legislative session.
We are in an era of increasing risk from weather and climate-related disasters. Extreme wind from thunderstorms, more intense hurricanes, increased incidence of extreme heat. All of those are projected to become more frequent as the global temperature warms.
The state should prepare for this present and growing climate threat by prepping our electrical grid for more extreme conditions. Weatherizing power plants, transmission lines, and other infrastructure for hot and cold extremes, as well as high wind.
When planning improvements to the electrical grid, energy experts endorse a number of technological solutions designed to improve reliability. Demand response allows utilities to shift flexible loads from periods of high demand to periods of low demand. Micro-grids are smaller circuits, which give providers flexibility in periods of high demand and are more nimble and flexible when providers are working to restore power after an event like Beryl.
Distributed systems mean that there aren’t large areas that all rely on a single generation facility. If a single generation facility goes down, the rest of the grid remains stable.
Any forward-looking plan for the electrical grid must include climate mitigation. Investment in reducing our carbon emissions now pays off in the future in the form of a more stable climate.
Many of these technological solutions can be combined with and benefit from increased investment in renewables and battery storage. This improves grid reliability AND reduces climate-harming emissions at the SAME TIME.
Improved grid reliability, better resilience from natural disasters, more affordable electricity, and protecting our future interests by mitigating climate change sounds like a winning strategy for a group of creative and forward-thinking policymakers.