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Risk Mitigation
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A few additional words about uncertainty
• The uncertainties mentioned at the outset are not likely to be resolved in the
near future.
• The “Predict -> Act” model that is often used in risk management is not wellmatched to the uncertainties associated with climate change.
• A Robust Decision Making approach is emerging as a preferred alternative in
which:
– Response options are considered in light of a range of multiple plausible future conditions.
– Where possible, flexibility is baked into decisions.
– Decisions are intentionally revisited periodically and adjusted, as appropriate, in light of new
information about the energy and climate systems.
• Requires a set of indicators to guide the adaptive management. E.g.,
– Climate change (to gauge the trajectory): Observed indicators; Updated future estimates (regional
differentiation important)
– Non-climate drivers: Observed indicators of, e.g., water withdrawals, population, land cover, etc.
– Electricity system impacts: Monitoring of each major interdependent system component
– Policies and Regulations: Ongoing analysis of how changing policy and regulatory environment
affects climate change impacts on reliability
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Cross-Cutting Preparation Considerations
Disaster-Related Adaptation
• Prepare for more weather-related disturbances and emergency responses; update
hazard and emergency risk management plans to include climate change
• Post-Event Analyses of Reliability (PEAR) – i.e., learn from disasters; overlay climate
change for a window into the future
• Pre-plan for post-event climate-resilient reconstruction
• But, in general, phase major climate-resilient investments with normal
replacement cycle
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Cross-Cutting Preparation Considerations (cont.)
• Employ energy smart engineering across or on specific elements within the energy
supply chain, e.g.:
• Consider revisions to engineering standards used to set current system capacity
levels that account for the changing conditions
• Smart metering that has outage notification capabilities, making it possible to
pinpoint outage timing and locations more precisely, saving time and money.
• Automated feeder switches that open or close in response to a fault condition
reducing the number of customers affected by an outage
• Equipment health sensors to reveal possibilities for premature failures
• Smart microgrids to help to achieve a good match between generation and load
• Raise the priority of energy demand management. Reduce energy demand by either
increasing efficiency or reducing consumption (incentives, education and awareness
raising); shift timing of demand to better match generation
• Promote investment in water efficient systems. Investments and shifts towards less
water-intensive generation methods such as dry/hybrid cooling systems for
thermoelectric power plants may prove to be viable and cost effective.
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Cross-cutting Preparation Considerations (cont.)
• Explore energy market mechanisms: e.g., power exchange agreements; purchasing from
the spot market; options purchasing;
• Utility commission rate‐setting practices for financing new and higher capacity levels may
need to be changed.
• Pro-actively partner with water management entities in planning for climate change;
secure an adequate water supply, suited to the water conditions of the future
• Improve land use planning and management.
– Integrate climate projections into facility planning and site selection processes.
– Promote improvements in upstream land use management, including afforestation to reduce floods,
erosion, silting and mudslides.
– Acquiring land for setbacks that allow space for projected increases in the floodplain.
– Secure adequate right-of-ways for increased fire buffering.
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Cross-cutting Preparation Considerations (cont.)
• Consider benefits of increases in system redundancy
• Promote flexibility and adaptability (RDM). Given climate change uncertainty, a flexible
and adaptable approach can improve capacity to adjust to new conditions.
– E.g., make shorter term resource agreements (e.g., water rights) that don’t constrain options in a
different climate; allow design curves to be adjusted on the basis of new information about climate
• Deal with all hazards in an integrated fashion; do not create stovepiped responses to
individual climate change hazards for individual system components.
– Protect the entire supply chain
– Integrate consideration of climate- and non-climate hazards
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Risk Mitigation – T&D
• Transmission line capacity
– build additional transmission capacity to cope with increased loads and to increase resilience to
direct physical impacts
– reduce line capacity requirements by producing a larger fraction of power at or near the
destination
– place transmission lines underground (also helps with fire and storm damage threats)
• Substation/Transformer capacity
– proactively install new types of cooling and heat-tolerant materials/technology
– install cooling systems for transformers
– elevate substation control rooms to reduce potential flooding hazards
(cont.)
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Risk Mitigation – T&D (cont.)
• Fire threats
– increase fire corridors around transmission lines
– use transmission line materials that can withstand high temperatures
• Erosion and flooding threats
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create “green” buffers around exposed infrastructure
construct levees or berms to protect exposed infrastructure
elevate or relocate substations
consider extreme event threats in new siting
relocate towers/poles
reinforce towers/poles against flooding
• High wind threats
– reinforce or replace towers/poles with stronger materials or additional supports to make them
less susceptible to wind & flood damage
• Prediction and Monitoring
– invest in improvements to short- and medium-term weather, climate, and hydrologic forecasting to
improve lead times for event preparation and response
– routinely monitor bellweather indicators related to climate, water, and T&D efficiency/costs
• Planning and design
– revise design thresholds using climate change projections
– incorporate climate change projections into planning processes
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Risk Mitigation – Fossil Fuel & Nuclear
• Increase margin of protection from river flooding and storm surge:
• Harden and elevate protective structures
• Invest in “green” infrastructure
• Build additional generation capacity to account for:
• Increased customer loads (summer cooling)
• Increased line losses
• Decreased generation efficiency
• Increased weather-related infrastructure damage
• Retrofit power plants with additional cooling equipment and processes
• Implement dry cooling technologies in water-limited areas
(cont.)
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Risk Mitigation – Fossil Fuel & Nuclear (cont.)
• Prepare emergency contingency plans to ensure adequate cooling water to cope with
drought conditions and high temperatures, accounting for competing water demands.
• Ensure adequate backup generation and cooling systems for nuclear power plants
facing increased exposure to flooding and other extremes.
• Explore energy market mechanisms: e.g., power exchange agreements; purchasing
from the spot market; options purchasing.
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Risk Mitigation - Hydropower
• Securing adequate water supply
– Contracts and contingencies based on an understanding of the hydrologic future that is different than the
past
– Enhancements to water use efficiencies and conservation (as well as electricity DSM)
– Watershed protection to reduce evaporation and silt loading
• Diversification
– New peak generation and purchasing sources for summer months, with declining generation potential
and growing summer demand
• Enhanced operational management
– Couple improvements in short-term and seasonal hydrologic forecasting to analyses of long-term climate
change to improve management and operational decisions. e.g., to maintain more winter carryover
reservoir storage, and reduce discretionary reservoir water releases
– Evaluate operational changes (e.g., reservoir rule curve changes) given climate change to optimize energy
output, given other constraints and water priorities
• Infrastructure retrofits
– Changes in intake elevation; spillway design
– Incorporation of climate change projections into engineering design and planning design specifications
that incorporate climate change could enable structures to better withstand more extreme conditions.
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Risk Mitigation – Other Renewables
• Engineering Design
– Wind: to design turbines and structures better able to handle changing wind speeds and gusts to
capture greater wind energy with taller towers, or to design new systems better able to capture
the energy of increased wind speeds.
– Solar: designs that improve passive airflow beneath photovoltaic mounting structures, reducing
panel temperature and increasing power output. Choose modules with more heat-resistant
photovoltaic cells and module materials designed to withstand short peaks of very high
temperature.
• Siting
– Wind: Choose sites that take into account expected changes in wind speeds, storm surges, sea
level rise, and river flooding during the lifetime of the turbines.
– Solar: site solar photovoltaic systems where expected changes in cloud cover are relatively low,
although this is difficult to accurately predict
• Improved weather prediction
– For wind and solar technologies, it may be possible to improve the reliability of expected output
with better weather predictions.
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Risk Mitigation – Other Renewables (cont.)
• Grid Design
– Wind and Solar: network expansion and/or protection to ensure reliability of more intermittent
renewables
– Wind and Solar: Storage of electrical energy to allow a greater percentage of renewable energy
into the grid-- when renewable output is high and the demand low, and generating when
renewable energy output is low and the demand high, grid stability can be improved and baseload
generation units can operate more efficiently. Storage can also reduce transmission congestion
and may reduce or delay the need for transmission upgrades
– Consider distributed systems (rather than feeding power into a single part of the grid), which can
improve grid stability (although mobile repair teams may be needed to repair damage from
extreme events)
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