The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, referred to as NERC, issued a report in May warning of an elevated risk of power outages due to the projected, and now experienced, extreme summer temperatures.  

Extreme summer temperatures can affect the power grid in multiple ways, with the most direct and obvious way being an increase in electrical demand as people crank up the air conditioners and other electronics inside to escape the heat.  

But not as obvious to the general public is the affect that extreme temperatures have on both the power lines and equipment, as well as the generating plants.

When electricity runs through power lines and equipment, it significantly heats those facilities up.  The more electricity flowing, the hotter these facilities get, which all essentially have maximum temperatures or ratings that they can operate at.  If temperatures outside are already very hot, less electricity can flow through the lines when compared to, say a cold winter day, before it heats up to its’ maximum temperature.

Mixing this inability to push quite as much power down the lines with a spike in energy demand from the general public, and you can hopefully see where problems can occur.

Extreme heat can also cause issues at power plants, and if the wrong combination of issues occur, a power plant may have to be shut down or at least limit its’ power output, causing more issues.

When a loss of a power plant occurs, utilities have to redirect power and potentially increase the output of nearby power plants to accommodate, and in extreme cases where a utility has run out of internal options, it may have to call on connected, neighboring utilities and buy power from them.  

But, they could also be experiencing similar issues and not have power to spare, which is exactly what happened in December of 2022 when Duke Energy in North Carolina had to implement rolling blackouts throughout the central part of the state during a winter storm.

Much colder than anticipated temperatures occurred, and with several plants down for maintenance and the failure of others, Duke Energy reached out to neighboring utilities for assistance; however, no one was able to provide the needed power as they were also dealing with the unanticipated spike in energy demand.

Now that we have the basics down, let’s look at NERC’s warnings for this summer.

On the map, we have much of the central Midwest, the upper parts of the Northeast, a large portion of the Southwest, and as always Texas, showing up as having an elevated risk this summer, meaning that they will be dangerously close to needing to implement rolling blackouts if an unexpected event occurs, like a generating plant having issues or say, a Hurricane through Texas. 

Now Texas will likely always be on this list, as they are an outlier to the rest of the US in that they are the only state that operates their own grid, where they are essentially on an island in relation to their neighboring utilities.  This puts them at significant risk in the event their own facilities fail, as they don’t have the interconnections that would allow other utilities to sell them needed power.  

Why do they do this?  Well since they don’t cross state lines, they do not require federal regulation like other utilities.

So getting back to North Carolina, as you can see, we are NOT one of the states at an elevated risk this summer.  The power grid through North Carolina has a large number of interconnections with neighboring utilities and has proven to have plenty of reserve generation capacity to cover for unexpected power plant issues.

And many may not know, the vast part of North Carolina, including Raleigh and Charlotte, are served by the largest electrical utility in the nation, Duke Energy, who are expected to the lead the way in terms of reliability and innovation.  

But does all that mean we are good to go?  Not necessarily.

First though, I hope you see from our videos that we here at the W Real Estate Group truly know and understand the greater Raleigh area, and if you are looking to buy or sell a home, we would love to help.  So please don’t hesitate to reach out!  Also, we have over 100k followers on Instagram and are always posting great content, so please check us out if you haven’t already!

North Carolina is in a somewhat unique position weather wise, as it can be subject to getting very hot in the summer as well as cold in the winter, many times unexpectedly, as per the earlier December 2022 example.  We are also impacted by hurricanes, which based on the latest predictions should be an active season, and while we haven’t had many lately, historically we have had major power outages from ice storms.  Check out this blog on North Carolina’s severe weather history.

And, North Carolina has the 4^th most solar generation in the US, which is great for the transition to clean energy, but can be an unreliable generation source that makes operating the grid much more of a challenge.

Duke Energy also had an evaluation performed of its’ system, which validated some of these concerns as its’ findings showed it is most vulnerable to flooding, typically caused by hurricanes, with some facilities needing to have been built in floodplains, and extreme heat that surpasses what the system was originally designed for.

Luckily though, Duke Energy is ahead of the game and has already been implementing measures to combat these risks.  

First off, Duke Energy was the ONLY US utility to have a credible plan for reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  This should make us feel confident in t he fact that our state’s main electric utility has a credible, detailed plan to work through many new technologies to achieve their clean energy goals.

But much of this plan involves the replacement and upgrading of aging infrastructure, which will, to use a buzz word, “harden” the grid while also preparing it for the clean energy transition.  

Duke Energy’s latest impact report indicated that between its’ various territories, it will be investing $170 to $180 Billion to implement its’ clean energy transition.  Much of that will involve retiring old coal plants and replacing them with gas plants, renewables, and likely Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, but also, upgrading the grid to handle the increased energy flow demands that these generation facilities demand.

Many of the grid’s existing lines and facilities were designed and built 50-75 years ago, and as you can imagine, design standards were much less stringent back then.  Now when the grid is upgraded, not only will it be designed with plenty of reserve electrical capacity, the facilities will be structurally up to current code and designed to withstand hurricane force winds and major ice events.

Now many of these upgrades are occurring on the transmission system, which are the very large lines you may see from time to time, but much of the outages we see from thunderstorms and smaller events happen on the distribution system, which are the smaller lines you see running along roadways and in neighborhoods.  

Duke Energy has also been targeting those for upgrades, installing many devices to create what they call a “self-healing” network where outages are automatically restored before the customer even knew it happened.  

But the distribution system is incredibly large, and will honestly likely never be fully “storm hardened,” as things like trees falling on to the lines are many times out of the utility’s control.

So while I am encouraged that North Carolina appears to be on the leading edge of many initiatives in the utility sector, we are susceptible here to many acts of mother nature that can cause power related issues.  And, I am glad we aren’t on a “power island” like Texas, as we have many options to receive assistance when needed.

For more information on North Carolina, check out our blog comparing Charlotte and Raleigh.

If you need help finding your next home in Raleigh, Durham, or anywhere else in the triangle, our team at the W Real Estate Group would love to help!

Please reach out via our contact information below:

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