Enhancing power system resilience to extreme weather events: A qualitative assessment of winter storm Uri

Winter Storm Uri placed infrastructure systems in Texas under conditions and stressors that they were not designed to withstand, forcing them to operate outside of their design tolerances. This unprecedented event presents a unique learning opportunity to prepare for future disasters. The paper discusses the power of system resilience by identifying issues in utility responses to Winter Storm Uri and extracting recommendations for electric utilities. Through 14 semi-structured interviews with electric utilities across the state, we collected information about (1) utility operations, decision-making, and communications during the event and immediately after; (2) utility-identified successes and failures; and (3) changes utilities have made since the storm. This analysis enables key recommendations for electric utilities to consider as they prepare for future disasters, such as sectionalizing circuits to improve load shed, cooperating with neighboring utilities to share resources and improve restoration procedures, and expanding the use of social media to improve customer outreach.

The authors recommend utilities prioritize changing their protocols and management strategies over immediate infrastructure upgrade, as they are less time and resource intensive and in some cases are more easily adaptable to other emergencies a utility may or may not already be prepared to address. Given the significance of this unprecedented event, these findings provide insights into how utilities may respond and adapt to unforeseen extreme weather conditions.