CAREER: CAS- Climate: Navigating a Two-Front Challenge for the Power Grid: Extreme Weather and the Race to Decarbonization

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

Extreme weather events (heat waves and cold snaps, droughts, wildfires, violent storms, and flooding) cost the U.S. electric power sector between $25 and $70 billion per year in the form of damaged equipment, service outages, and price shocks in electricity markets. At the same time, in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change, the electric power sector must decarbonize quickly by increasing reliance on wind and solar, thus introducing a new source of weather risk for the grid. Failure to navigate the power grid’s growing and increasingly complex exposure to weather risk and extreme events could significantly slow society’s efforts to decarbonize by making it more expensive to do so. For electric power utilities, extreme weather events manifest as large, unexpected increases in costs. Either these must pass to customers, or they make it more difficult for utilities to meet debt service obligations, leading to credit downgrades and higher interest rates on borrowed sums, thereby increasing infrastructure costs at a time when the grid requires trillions of dollars of investment to meet decarbonization goals. This research will broadly explore these dynamics across different sections of the U.S. grid, developing new insights that address two major science questions of critical importance to society: 1) How will extreme weather, manifesting as price and reliability shocks in electricity markets, affect the cost of decarbonization? and 2) How will increased adoption of low carbon technologies alter the exposure of the grid to extreme weather? In addition, the PI will advance cross-disciplinary graduate and undergraduate education with the development of a new course: “Weather Risk and the Grid”. In conjunction with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, the PI will engage in adult and K-12 educational activities through the museum’s Science Café evening speaker series. The research will weave together new and existing knowledge about natural hazards, power systems, electricity markets and utility finance in order to explore interdependencies and feedbacks between the U.S. power sector’s efforts to manage extreme weather and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The investigator will establish an improved paradigm for modeling weather risk in power systems that accounts for heterogeneity in natural resources, climate, infrastructure, and human institutions. A unifying thread throughout, and a major research objective, is the development and application of open source systems analysis frameworks capable of representing the complex dynamics of the grid at sufficient scale and resolution to model the effects of extreme weather. This framework will be developed and applied across a “portfolio” of four research projects, each of which addresses a different set of weather risks and challenges facing grid stakeholders. A corresponding, major goal of the educational and graduate training program is to expand the relatively narrow role STEM students play in the electric power sector. Participation in the proposed research and education program will equip a new cohort of scientists and engineers with a unique combination of expertise and relevant technical skills in earth systems engineering, power systems analysis, and finance and economics, allowing them to contribute interdisciplinary understanding and solutions to the grid’s “two front” challenge of managing weather risk while quickly decarbonizing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.