Hartford Business Journal

8 Hartford Business Journal • April 17, 2017 www.HartfordBusiness.com Eversource facility aims to predict storm severity, other threats to CT By John Stearns jstearns@HartfordBusiness.com T he Eversource Energy Center at UConn — a weath- er, climate and energy research hub — has already helped electric utilities better prepare for storms and potential power outages since it was established in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene in Aug. 2011 and the Halloween weekend storm two months later. Those storms left hundreds of thousands of cus- tomers without electricity, some for more than a week, caused millions of dollars in economic losses and proved the need for better science to help predict storm sever- ity, potential power disruption and assist emergency preparedness. Hurricane Sandy hit in Oct. 2012, doing significant damage as well. After those storms, "we real- ized there was a need, to be able to scientifically, with precision and accuracy, predict damage that would occur on our electric grid and be able to plan for that and … ultimately build our sys- tem in a different way to help pre- vent that," said Ken Bowes, Ever- source Energy's vice president of transmission performance. Eversource provided $9 million over five years to fund research and development at the center — seed money that's already attracting additional investment. A prototype storm outage modeling program devel- oped by UConn after the 2011 storms helped utilities better prepare for Sandy, said professor Emmanouil Anagnostou, the Eversource Energy endowed chair in environmental engineering and director of the Ever- source Energy Center. "That really motivated [state regulators], to say, yes, better information, better science or engineering technology — it's important for this industrial sector," Anagnostou said. That led to the decision to invest in research and form the center, which started in 2015 and is temporar- ily housed in the engineering school and will move into UConn's new Innovation Partnership Building later this year when it's completed. The center will occupy about 3,000 square feet of the 113,000-square-foot building that is the first in UConn's new Technology Park on the campus' north end. The outage prediction model, the first significant program to come out of the center, combines sophis- ticated weather forecasting developed by UConn with historical storm outage data to create a predictive analysis program that helps forecast storm severity and outages, Anagnostou said. The impact model takes into account wind duration, speed and gusts, plus precipita- tion, snow and flooding. The model required analyzing megabytes and tera- bytes of data related to the ground, power infrastruc- ture and surrounding trees in a way that would most accurately predict outage locations, which is key to preparation, Anagnostou said. "We can really have an impact on pre-staging line crews and tree crews and other resources we need … if we have several days of advance warning," Bowes said. The model, for example, was used to help prepare for the impact of the Nor'easter that hit the state last month with heavy snow, getting crews in place ahead of time to prepare for outages. The predictive model has already attracted the atten- tion of Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, which signed an agreement to advance the technology by combining UConn's analytics model with Schneider's WeatherSentry Online platform to help utilities better understand storm impacts on their systems and better prepare. Commercial applications that emerge will create licensing royalties for UConn, Bowes said. The model is one of about a dozen research projects at the center either already or soon to be examining areas that include tree endurance to wind, snow and ice, tree prun- ing/thinning management, flood vulnerability for electric substations that incorporates historical data and climate change analysis, electric grid reinforcements and resilien- cy, geomagnetic disturbances, integration of renewable power generation, and cyber and physical security. Studies go beyond the engineering school to include the business school, for example, to run economic models and forecasts for utility resilience strategies to measure dollars spent on resilience versus return to the utility and state, Anagnostou said. Tree and forest management is a key early area of study and includes trees equipped with instruments to better understand impacts from wind, ice and snow loads. Electric grid resiliency is another key research area for the center, Bowes said. It goes beyond how utilities design, build and operate their systems to better withstand Eversource Energy Center Director Emmanouil Anagnostou stands in front of UConn's Innovation Partnership Building in Mansfield's Storrs section, where the energy center will move to later this year. FOCUS ENERGY Q&A Weighing New England's energy future Q&A talks to Gordon van Welie, president and CEO of ISO New Eng- land Inc., which operates the six-state New England power system and oversees the region's wholesale electricity marketplace. Q: After energy prices spiked during the frig- id 2013-2014 winter, Connecticut and other New England states have enjoyed lower wholesale electricity prices. Should we feel at ease? A: New England has been lucky. We've had relatively mild win- ters recently, so there's been enough natural gas for both heating and electricity generation. That's important for three reasons: natural gas prices are at record lows, the cost of fuel is the biggest factor in wholesale electric- ity prices, and half the electricity generated in New England comes from power plants using natural gas. Wholesale power prices last year were the lowest since 2003, primarily because we didn't see the severe natural gas pipeline constraints of colder winters. Price volatility aside, power system reliability is at risk if almost half our generat- ing fleet can't get fuel. New England's fuel infra- structure has barely expanded, while demand for natural gas for power plants and for heat- ing continues to rise. We're still vulnerable to price spikes, and to growing challenges to reliability. Q: About 4,200 megawatts of coal, oil and nuclear power plants will be retired by 2019. What will replace them, and what will be the impact of this changing resource mix? A: About half of the proposed new power plants would use natu- ral gas, and about 40 percent would be wind farms. More natural gas generation will increase the need for fuel infrastructure. Solutions could include dual-fuel capability — generators could add the ability to use oil stored on-site if they can't get gas — or more pipeline capac- ity or liquefied natural gas storage. The onshore wind farms are proposed for far northern New England, which will require expansion of the region's trans- mission system. The transition from coal and oil to natural gas and renewables has reduced carbon emissions sig- nificantly in New England. How- ever, the retirements of nuclear power plants, which have no emis- sions, could reverse the trend. The other concern is reliabil- ity. When natural gas generators can't get fuel in winter, we've relied heavily on coal, oil and nuclear generators to keep the lights on. But what will happen when they retire and their replace- ments can't get fuel? There aren't enough wind farms to fill the gap and solar is of limited help in win- ter, when demand peaks after sunset. Battery storage still isn't cost-effective and grid-scale. Ener- gy efficiency is help- ing, but large-scale electricity production will still be needed to meet the demand. Q: A potential rise in emissions is a concern. If renew- ables require costly transmission lines that take a long time to build, and grid- scale energy storage is years away, what's the best mix of energy sources in the near term? A: New England's competitive wholesale markets and the states' clean-energy initiatives are deter- mining the resource mix. Com- petitive markets have attracted investment in natural-gas-fired generators, while the states' pub- lic policy initiatives are support- ing energy efficiency, renewable resources, and customer-sited solar arrays. Until we have a fully renew- able power system with battery backup, the grid will need fast, flexible generators — like natural gas generators — to balance the variations in wind and sun energy. Q: ISO-NE can't order natu- ral gas pipeline expansions or implement a carbon tax, but you're considering increasing performance incentives for generators and offering special reliability contracts to certain non-gas plants to postpone retirement. What else can be done to ensure long-term grid reliability? A: Incentives have already been established for generators to per- form whenever needed; consider- ing the region's growing fuel secu- rity challenge, those incentives may need to be enhanced. Special reliability contracts will only be considered if we've run out of alternatives. We're cur- rently conducting a fuel-security study, and developing a proposal to incorporate energy resources supported by state policies into the wholesale market while maintain- ing competitive prices for other resources. n GORDON VAN WELIE President and CEO of ISO New England Inc. Continued H B J P H O T O | J O H N S T E A R N S Ken Bowes, vice president of transmission perfor- mance, Eversource Energy

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