Here & Now

What's the Risk for Blackouts in the Midwest Energy Grid?

Zac Schultz:

Extreme weather blew through Wisconsin this week. Heat indexes hit triple digits, creating heat advisories to residents in southeast Wisconsin. And Milwaukee is investigating two heat-related deaths. Severe storms also wreaked havoc, leaving nearly 100,000 without power. Some for days. A spring report from an energy watchdog group warned the Midwest grid is at high risk of energy emergencies and possible blackouts. Marisa Wojcik sat down with electrical engineering emeritus Professor Chris DeMarco to learn more.

Marisa Wojcik:

The grid monitor is warning of these blackouts, growing demand and shrinking supply, so these headlines about potential blackouts, is that creating an alarm?

Chris DeMarco:

Their report in this May of 2022 flagged particularly the north central region of the U.S., the northern Midwest, as being short on sufficient capacity margin. So we always like to build in some margin for unforeseen events: equipment outages, unexpectedly warm weather, some peak in load that wasn’t foreseen. And those margins are slimmer now than these reliability organizations would like them to be. I would say the — NERC is the acronym they go by. NERC raised that alarm I think in part just for action. And the actual operator of the grid throughout much of the middle part of the country is the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. They actually had signs of some of these shortfalls earlier in the spring. And they’ve certainly been trying to take steps. I think NERC’s warning, certainly legitimate, certainly based on real data. But in part, being conservative to spur action to try and avoid significant outages.

Marisa Wojcik:

Is that why experts disagree on the severity, because the report is saying that it’s a sobering situation but other people are saying, we really don’t need to be that concerned?

Chris DeMarco:

You know, there’s certainly a mix of motivations among the different players in the grid. But I think the challenge in much of this is you really are trying to predict things that are inherently random chance. We know that inevitably some equipment will fail. Inevitably we’ll get some conditions we didn’t anticipate. And historically, when severe blackouts have happened, they’re an accumulation of these relatively rare events coming together. So it’s a judgment call in how you weight those different probabilities. I think it is important that the organizations in charge take a conservative approach and you know, grid reliability remains an important need and I think a backdrop to all of this that thankfully thus far has not proven to be as significant a concern as we might have anticipated early in the year, but are there risks of cyber-attacks on the grid simultaneous with these shall we say natural events that might be straining it.

Marisa Wojcik:

Are cyber-attacks a legitimate large concern?

Chris DeMarco:

I think they remain a legitimate concern. The evidence to the extent it’s available publicly, seems to be that there have not been the scale of significant attacks that world events might have caused us to fear earlier in the year. But you know, that’s a situation that evolves day by day.

Marisa Wojcik:

Does Wisconsin have additional capacity? Is that something that can be produced and stored? Or are we importing energy from outside of the state?

Chris DeMarco:

So as a state, we are typically a net importer and indeed, on a broader geographic scale, several of these regions that might so operate switch, by the way don’t coincide exactly with state lines. We’re part of two of the 10 regions that MISO divides up as operational areas for these capacity assessments. They are net importers. The general viewpoint is that’s not a bad thing, provided that’s import capacity that you can absolutely count upon.

Marisa Wojcik:

How much do the somewhat contested high-capacity transmission lines, how do those play into the entire energy landscape in Wisconsin?

Chris DeMarco:

You know, of course, severe weather events can often have an impact over a big geographic footprint. But if you can reach further for your sources of energy, you know, you may move outside of a particular pocket of very hot weather or storm conditions. So it is attractive to be able to move energy effectively over long distances. But it comes at that environmental cost of building transmission lines. You know, like — my personal orientation as an electrical engineer, I probably like transmission lines more than the average person, but I recognize, you know, many folks find them an eyesore and would prefer not to have them close to their property. That represents a societal trade-off we really have to grapple with in policy.

Marisa Wojcik:

Does the increase in battery technology make it easier to store and potentially have energy at hand when emergencies happen?

Chris DeMarco:

Part of the challenge in the power grid, I think even the lay person sort of roughly understands, but the impact may be bigger than many folks recognize. It really is a system in which supply has to match demand moment by moment. And that puts real stresses on the grid. Even a little bit of relief in time, half an hour, certainly several hours, can be very valuable. So I think what you’ll see increasingly, particularly with solar resources, you know — not hard to understand that they produce their maximum output midday. But since we humans tend to feel the accumulated effect of heat, we often tend to pump up our air conditioners most at the end of the afternoon. So you don’t get an exact coincidence in time of when you’re getting the best production from the sun versus when the sun is roughly speaking driving the biggest component of consumption, air-conditioning. And if you can move that a little bit, a few hours in time, you can do a great deal to relieve stress on the grid. And in some cases may lessen the need for longer distance transmission.

Marisa Wojcik:

Professor Chris DeMarco, thank you so much for this conversation.

Chris DeMarco:

Real pleasure to be with you today. Thank you.