INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT AND JOBS ACT
Resources for grid resilience
Section 40101
$5 billion to help prevent outages and enhance the resilience of the electric grid
This section establishes a grant program to support activities that reduce the likelihood and consequence of impacts to the electric grid due to extreme weather, wildfire, and natural disaster.
Asset health management
Knowing not only when a particular asset will fail but also how—and how to fix it—is essential for utilities looking to reduce maintenance and downtime while improving reliability. Today’s asset health tools offer continuous condition monitoring and predictive maintenance based on historical performance of various types of equipment. Utilities should look to partner with a well-established supplier to take advantage of data and expertise gathered from a large installed base.
Wildfire mitigation
Modern fuses designed to prevent ignition of forest fires have a special body and unique engagement pin and damage sensor to help improve system safety and power quality. Because the smallest spark can ignite a wildfire under certain conditions, these fuses are designed to contain sparks that could otherwise be emitted during fuse operation and potentially fall on dry vegetation, starting a fire.
Microgrids
Interest in microgrids continues to grow. For utilities, they present a multi-faceted solution that can improve local reliability even when major disruptions occur on the main grid. Microgrids can also aggregate a collection of assets (e.g., solar panels, wind turbines, storage devices, load shedding, etc.) into a virtual power plant and earn additional revenue by providing ancillary services back to the grid. Utilities don’t have to engineer and build microgrids on their own. Several technology suppliers offer design, engineering and construction services as well as service after installation. It’s also a good idea for the microgrid to be engineered holistically from the beginning to ensure all the pieces work as expected and deliver the expected returns.
Breakers and reclosers
At a basic level, having more breakers on the distribution system gives the system operator more options to isolate disruptions and re-route power to minimize the impact of local outages (which account for the vast majority of service disruptions). Reclosers help to speed the restoration of power from intermittent faults without having to dispatch work crews. Both of these technologies have decades of proven service on utility grids around the world and can deliver a significant bang for the buck in terms of improving reliability and overall grid resilience. Modern, cloud-connected breakers and reclosers offer even more for utilities in terms of monitoring and control and the data they capture can be fed into asset management programs to optimize maintenance spending.