Power Regulators Warning Power Grids Vulnerable This Winter

Winter-Power-Outages
Photo by Insaug.com

A recent NPR article warns that much of the nation’s power grid is vulnerable to the winter threat approaching with major winter storms that could cause power outages and power shortages potentially affecting over 60% of US and Canada.

“North America’s power grid is vulnerable…People living in Southwestern states are at particular risk.”

(Continue Reading at NPR.org…)

TVA Will Improve Its Power Grid By $15 Billion Over Next 3-Years

TVA-Power-Grid

TVA’s load growth demand forecasted is expecting over a 30% increase in power demand within the next decade. Like other utilities trending away from fossil fuel power generation due to stringent carbon emission regulations, TVA is retiring their coal-powered plants and replacing with cleaner energy generation and renewable resources.

The trend of moving away from older fossil fuel technology to cleaner generation systems is very costly. TVA recognizes this and has approved moving forward with capital expenditures of $15 billion that it will invest over the next 3 years by performing system reliability upgrades and transition into cleaner energy supply.

(Continue Reading at TVA.com…)

Pennsylvania Is Moving from Coal Power to Renewables

New-Solar-Power

As coal power and other fossil fuels continue to decline as the nation’s leading power generation source, more power utilities are increasing renewable energy sources such as solar power.

Pennsylvania is replacing their planned fossil fuel generation retirements with clean solar power. The state is helping promote more jobs and job transitions for the green switch from traditional carbon emission type power generation into renewable energy resources.

(Continue Reading at Powermag.com…)

Power Plant Retirements Are Affecting Grid Reliability!

Grid-Reliability
Photo from Utility Dive / Sean Gallup / Getty Images

With the increases in power generation retirements in both coal powered and nuclear energy plants, presents major reliability concerns to the electric infrastructure. There is over “83 GW of fossil fuel and nuclear generation” in planned retirements over the next decade that could wreak havoc on the nations power system.

NERC indicated in their “Long-Term Reliability Assessment” that this “creates blackout risks for most of the United States.”

(Continue Reading at Utility Dive…)

Tesla to Recall Over 2-Million Electric Vehicles

Tesla-Recalls
Photo from Tesla.com

Tesla has announced they will recall over 2-million electric vehicles that affect multiple Tesla models, like models S, X, Y, 3, and semi-trucks. The recall is due to its “full self-driving beta” software causing some life-threatening and unsafe conditions.

The recalls will include a free software update to patch any software bugs in the coding to improve driver safety.

(Continue Reading at USA Today…)

Multiple Power Utilities Affected by Recent Cyber Attacks!

Power-Utilities-Cyber-Attacks

The US Electrical Grid Infrastructure continues to be vulnerable to cyber attackers and foreign nation state adversaries in attempts to bring havoc on power systems that supply other critical infrastructures.

Cyber security protection continues to be a major focus on power utilities and other critical systems. These cyber threats continue after power companies and their contractors as in the recent attacks.

(Continue Reading)