power grid

The way we generate and distribute electricity has become a Rubik’s cube for power companies, regulators, and consumers. The need to reduce carbon emissions linked to climate change by investing in renewables is acknowledged by most experts. At the same time, recent unusual weather events have demonstrated that there is also an urgent need to […]

The mid-February blackouts in Texas have raised a lot of questions about power grid reliability. While investigations into the underlying causes of the outages could take a while to complete, and I don’t

Reliability performance is core to the utility industry. Utilities strategically design and invest in their system to maximize reliability performance—traditionally measured by System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI), System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI), and/or Consumer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI). These quantitative metrics largely drive utility investment decisions, shape strategic priorities, dictate regulatory approvals, […]

When evaluating resource adequacy requirements, many power companies and grid operators have used a methodology that originated more than 70 years ago. This probabilistic reliability approach has generally performed adequately through the years. It has generally evaluated loss-of-load events occurring at frequencies of one-day-in-10-years (1-in-10) to be acceptable in terms of system reliability. However, it’s […]

While not a new occurrence, in recent years wildfires have wreaked havoc across the western U.S. We have also seen Mother Nature batter coastlines and landscapes around the globe, and the ever-mounting pace of

2020 was a lot of things, most of them sombre. However, there is one positive way I believe we in the distribution grid sector can describe the year, as an inflection point. In years to come, we may well look back on 2020 as the year when terms like “energy transition” and “digitalization” finally began […]

Electricity transmission network operators are being tasked with adding more renewable energy resources to the power grid. The use of static VAR compensators (SVCs) is growing as a means to control voltage

Contract covers maintenance of 116 high-voltage substations Largest power transmission service agreement for Siemens Energy in Middle East Strengthens power supply security in Kuwait Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) awarded Siemens Energy a contract to provide maintenance of 116 high-voltage substations. The five-year service contract represents Siemens Energy’s largest service agreement in the […]

Managing demand on the power grid, at best a never-ending balancing act between generation and load, has become an increasingly complex and challenging responsibility. Along with the urgent need to reduce

Virtual power plants are becoming a driving force in the power sector. This article explains how they enable utilities and aggregators to pool production from multiple plants and distributed sources, achieving