Amid insane heat wave, can the Pacific Northwest power grid handle the stress?

By James Conca

From 1894 until last month, Seattle had only recorded three days in history over 100°F. That’s three really hot days in 127 years. And none were in June whose previous record high was 96°F.

Then came this June, where in its last week, three days in a row exceeded 100°F. The last Saturday exceeded 102°F and Sunday was 104°F, the hottest day ever recorded…until the following day, when the temperature was 108°F degrees.

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We used to have a resilient and reliable grid but that is also changing. America’s aging electrical infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to outages and other disruptions, especially weather-related events.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the leading transnational regulatory body, is struggling to produce measurable and enforceable reliability standards for power systems. One reason for this is that the organization does not adequately account for outages occurring in the distribution system and incidents related to severe weather, both of which are on the rise.

This is not surprising since for the last decade the American Society of Civil Engineers has given America between a D+ and a C- on our energy infrastructure report card, as well as most other areas of our infrastructure.

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