Severe weather can disproportionately put rural energy needs at risk; study aims for improvements

New study aims to make rural grid more resilient.
(Photo by Matthew Henry, Unsplash)

Extreme weather can cause a strain on rural electrical grids. If the grid can't meet demands, thousands of lives can be at risk. To build a more weather-resilient grid, researchers "from universities in South Dakota, Puerto Rico, Maine and Alaska are working together for the next four years to investigate severe weather events and electrical grids," reports Kristi Eaton of The Daily Yonder. "The project is titled 'STORM: Data-Driven Approaches for Secure Electric Grids in Communities Disproportionately Impacted by Climate Change.'"

Tim Hansen, associate professor at South Dakota State University and co-principal investigator on the project, told Eaton, "The basic idea is to go to a few specific communities, and through community engagement, figure out what are the challenges that they are facing with regard to the impact of extreme weather on the power grid, and then solve some of those issues in terms of community outreach and engagement, designing new methods to make the grid more resilient." Eaton reports, "Hansen said the research project is based in strategic locations in which different weather events occur. Alaska, for example, deals with extreme cold, while Puerto Rico deals with storms and flooding."

The researchers will work within rural communities and help them develop severe weather responses. Study investigator Daisy Huang is an associate professor at the Univesity of Alaska Fairbanks and a mechanical engineer. "She conducts research at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, which looks at optimizing power, mostly in rural communities around Alaska," Eaton writes. "She said the rural communities are mostly not connected to the state grid." Huang told Eaton: "So they're all on their own diesel-fired power plants. And so we look at ways to integrate renewables [and] optimize their diesel for maximum efficiency."

Huang uses the study's outreach to build up science, technology, engineering, and mathematics projects within rural communities. She told Eaton: "The idea is looking from a community perspective – what their energy needs are, and how we can translate that – in parallel – developing educational programs around kids learning about energy systems." The study itself is full of young researchers. Hansen told Eaton: "It's a very good opportunity for the [National Science Foundation] to really build up the mentorship, and really build a lot of people's long-term careers off of the back of this." Eaton adds, "Hansen noted there will also be a virtual reality lab for remote power and energy research studies between all the participating institutions."