Testimony Date: 03/18/2021
Congress Session Name: 117th Congress (First Session)
Witness: Susan F. Tierney
Witness Credentials: Senior Advisor, Analysis Group,
Inc., Denver, Colorado; and Member, Committee on the Future of Electric
Power in the United States, Board on Energy and Environmental Systems,
Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, The National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
Chamber: House
Committee: Science, Space, and Technology Committee
Lessons learned from the Texas blackouts:
Research needs for a
secure and resilient grid
Testimony of
Susan F. Tierney, Ph.D.
Senior Advisor
Analysis
Group, Inc., Denver, Colorado
and
Member, Committee on the
Future of Electric Power in the United States
Board on Energy and
Environmental Systems
Division on Engineering and Physical
Sciences|
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and
Medicine
Before the
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
U.S. House of
Representatives
March 18, 2021
Introduction
Good morning, Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and Members of
the Committee.
My name is Susan Tierney.1 I am a Senior Advisor at Analysis
Group, an economic consulting firm where I specialize on policy,
regulation, economics, environmental, and innovation issues associated
with the electric and gas industries.
Thank you for inviting me to testify at this important hearing aimed at
discovering what caused the recent extended power outages in Texas
during a severe winter storm in mid-February of 2021, and identifying
critical research and development needs for grid resilience, reliability
and security. I understand that you are particularly interested in
research sponsored by the Department of Energy related to relevant grid
technology, energy generation technology and cybersecurity research.
I further understand that this hearing serves as a legislative hearing
for a bill — Grid Security Research and Development Act (H.R. 5760 in
the 116th Congress), which was previously introduced by Representative
Ami Bera — expected to be reintroduced in this Congress. That bill would
authorize an interagency research, development, and demonstration
program on electric-grid and energy-system cybersecurity, physical
security, resilience, and emergency response.
I am testifying on my own behalf at today’s hearing and it is an honor
to share my thoughts and observations with you. But as part of my
testimony, I will also share various research-related recommendations of
several recent committees of the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering and Medicine (“The Academies”) on which I have recently (or
currently) served.2 The recommendations from those
committees’ reports that I describe in this testimony are ones that
relate to resilience, grid modernization and planning, and cyber
security. I will be careful to identify those instances where I am
reporting the consensus results of those committees versus expressing my
own opinion. All of the National Academies’ reports from which I will
draw recommendations were completed prior to the Texas events that have
prompted this hearing.
The February 2021 outages in Texas led to extremely challenging living
conditions for households, including long periods without power and in
some cases also without access to other critical services (like water
supply) in parts of the state. In holding this hearing, the Science
Committee is examining important issues: What led to these events? And
what research is needed to avoid or at least minimize the impacts of
such events in the future?
The February 2021 Texas electricity crisis highlights the
extraordinarily important role that reliable and resilient electric
service plays in the economic and social health and well-being of
American communities.
It is clear that steps could have been taken by state officials, grid
operators and energy asset owners in Texas that would have at least
lessened the extent of power system and gas system outages, and the
human hardships that resulted from them.
The events also cry out for the need for further research and analysis
(not to mention policy and system changes) to ensure reliable and
resilient electric supply in the future, even in the event of extreme
weather conditions that we can anticipate in the decades ahead. The
federal government has an essential role to play in supporting this
research. As the Academies’ 2017 report on Enhancing the Resilience of the Electric Grid pointed out:
The Department of Energy (DOE) is the federal entity with a mission to
focus on the longer-term issues of developing and promulgating
technologies and strategies to increase the resilience and modernization
of the electric grid. No other entity in the United States has the
mission to support such work, which is critical as the electricity
system goes through the transformational changes described in this
report. The committee views research, development, and demonstration
activities that support reliable and resilient electricity systems to
constitute a public good. If funding is not provided by the federal
government, the committee is concerned that this gap would not be filled
either by states or by the private sector. In part this is because the
challenges and solutions to ensuring grid resilience are complex, span
state and even national boundaries, and occur on time scales that do not
align with business models.3
I appreciate the Science Committee’s attention to these important
research questions.
In my testimony, I first discuss the factors that affected the
electricity outages that occurred in parts of Texas for several days in
February 2021. In this part of my testimony, I draw upon my own
experience and understanding of what transpired there. When I turn to
the second part of my testimony—where I discuss related research needs
for a robust, reliable, safe, and resilient electric system—I draw more
directly on the work of the National Academies’ committees on which I
served.
Factors affecting the electric supply outages in Texas in February
2021:
Much has already been written and said about the Texas electricity
crisis, the related public health and safety concerns (and tragedies),
and exorbitant electricity price increases in the portion of Texas where
the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (“ERCOT) manages the grid and
wholesale power market. There have already been numerous federal and
state legislative and regulatory hearings;4 bills introduced
in Congress5; lawsuits;6 and investigations.7
Experts are weighing in to explain these events in seminars8 and podcasts9, in magazine,10 newspaper11
and industry articles,12 and in other many other
commentaries.13
Given the extensive coverage of the 2021 Texas electricity crisis, I
will just briefly summarize here some of the important pre-existing
conditions in the ERCOT electric system, key developments that occurred
in tandem as part of the electric crisis, and some of the key conditions
and impacts associated with the electrical outages in the ERCOT Texas
region.
Pre-existing conditions before the mid-February events
- The ERCOT electric system is one of the largest integrated electric
grids around the world, even though it is electrically separated from
the rest of the power systems in the lower 48 states in the U.S. From a
physical point of view, the ERCOT system includes vast networks of
high-voltage transmission lines and a diverse set of power plants
(including nuclear, coal, natural gas, and renewable facilities). Sales
of electricity to Texas consumers account for 11 percent of the nation’s
total retail sales.14
- For nearly two decades, electricity supply to consumers in the ERCOT
portion of Texas has been supplied through restructured, competitive
wholesale and retail electricity markets. ERCOT administers the
wholesale power market, with oversight by the Public Utility Commission
of Texas (“PUCT”). (The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”)
does not have jurisdiction over wholesale sales in ERCOT because there
are no sales in interstate commerce, in light of ERCOT being electricity
isolated from other states.) The PUCT has approved a market design for
ERCOT’s system market that includes the “gold standard” — an approach
called a “bid-based, security-constrained economic dispatch with
locational marginal pricing” — for determining the pricing and efficient
dispatch of electricity resources on the system. Unlike every other
region in the U.S. with a centralized grid operator like ERCOT, however,
Texas has neither a mandatory centralized capacity market administered
by the grid operator (as in the 13-state PJM region, or in New York or
New England) nor a state-supervised least-cost resource planning process
(as in California, and in the states that participate in the MISO and
SPP regions in the central part of the U.S.) in order to ensure that
adequate supplies of electrical resources exist on the system. The PUCT
has approved this “energy-only market” approach for the ERCOT region,
relying on the role of price spikes during periods of electricity
shortages to create incentives for investment so that generating
resources are available to produce power during those periods.
- The PUCT also oversees the retail electricity market in the service
territories of investor-owned utilities. In the ERCOT portion of Texas
(i.e., in most of Texas), each electricity customer must choose his/her
preferred competitive retail supplier (called Retail Electricity
Providers), with power delivered over wires owned by electric
utilities).15 Retail Electricity Providers offer a variety of
types of service and price options to customers, including ones with
fixed prices over a pre-established contract period and others with
prices that vary according to prices that change in the hourly wholesale
markets.
- Texas is the only state with this particular combination of elements
in its electric industry: a restructured, energy-only wholesale market;
and mandatory consumer choice of competitive power suppliers. Largely
viewed by academic economists and many—but not all—industry experts as a
successful electric market design, in terms of producing economically
efficient outcomes. (I note that some industry observers, including
myself, have questioned whether such a market design, which relies
explicitly on the expectation of price spikes at times of power
shortages is politically sustainable in the event that such conditions
actually occur.16)
- For several years, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation
(“NERC”) has pointed to the fact that ERCOT operates with slim reserve
margins and with related potential reliability risks. As explained by
James Robb, who leads NERC, in March 11th, 2021 testimony before the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee: “Concern for ERCOT’s
reserve margins has been a standing concern in NERC’s assessments. In
the most recent 2020/2021 Winter Reliability Assessment, NERC warns of
the potential for extreme generation resource outages in ERCOT due to
severe weather in winter and summer, and the potential need for grid
operators to employ operating mitigations or energy emergency alerts to
meet peak demand.”17
- Although Texas is typically a summer-peaking system, with highest
electrical demand during the hottest-weather months, it has previously
experienced extreme cold weather conditions during the winter which
created electric reliability problems when power plants were not able to
perform, for one reason or another. During a cold snap that affected the
Southwestern states (including Texas) in February 2011, for example:
“Between February 1 and February 4, a total of 210 individual generating
units within the footprint of [ERCOT] … experienced either an outage, a
derate, or a failure to start. The loss of generation was severe enough
on February 2 to trigger a controlled load shed of 4000 MW, which
affected some 3.2 million customers.”18 ERCOT had thus
experienced prior difficulties in maintaining reliable electricity
service during extreme winter weather conditions.
- Following an investigation of that February 2011 cold-weather
reliability event in the Southwest, the staffs of FERC and NERC made
findings and recommendations that were relevant to actions of state
legislators and regulators, owners of electric generating units, and
parties in the natural gas industry in Texas.19 The FERC/NERC
report encouraged, among other things, that state policymakers adopt
policies to encourage actions to ensure improved performance of power
systems.
These findings and recommendations included the following:
-
Finding: “The lack of any state, regional or Reliability Standards
that directly require generators to perform winterization left
winter-readiness dependent on plant or corporate choices….”20
-
Finding: “Generators were generally reactive as opposed to being
proactive in their approach to winterization and preparedness. The
single largest problem during the cold weather event was the
freezing of instrumentation and equipment.”21
-
Recommendation: “Transmission Operators and Balancing Authorities
should obtain from Generator Owner/Operators their forecasts of real
output capability in advance of an anticipated severe weather event;
the forecasts should take into account both the temperature beyond
which the availability of the generating unit cannot be assumed, and
the potential for natural gas curtailments.”22
-
Recommendation: “States in the Southwest should examine whether
Generator/Operators ought to be required to submit winterization
plans, and should consider enacting legislation where necessary and
appropriate.”23
-
Recommendation: “Lawmakers in Texas and New Mexico, working with
their state regulators and all sectors of the natural gas industry,
should determine whether production shortages during extreme cold
weather events can be effectively and economically mitigated through
the adoption of minimum, uniform standards for the winterization of
natural gas production and processing facilities.”24
- In their release of the 2011 report, the FERC and NERC staffs said
that the outages could have been avoided, and “that the purpose of the
report was not to assign blame but to look at the causes of the outages
and figure out the best ways to prevent them in the future.”25
- For the most part, the electric industry and gas industry in Texas did
not act on these recommendations, nor did regulators at the PUCT (for
electric industry issues) or at the Texas Railroad Commission (for gas
industry issues). As of the start of 2021, the power generation and gas
production/delivery systems in Texas had not undergone the types of
weatherization actions that could have enabled the provision of energy
supply in the event of extreme winter temperature events.26
Apparently, the owners of these power-generation and natural gas
facilities were not sufficiently incented by ERCOT Texas’ market design
to voluntarily put in place the physical equipment and/or contract
agreements to enable them to be available to operate during shortage
conditions.
- These—and other—conditions set the stage for the energy emergency
events in February 2021.
What Happened: Real-time contributors to the Texas power
outages
- During the second week of February 2021, extreme winter weather
conditions affected the middle of the country, with frigid temperatures,
snow and ice lasting for days. While other parts of that region
routinely expect harsh conditions in the winter, Texas was particularly
hard hit. Although ERCOT expected cold weather, the conditions were more
extreme than anticipated.27
- In the ERCOT region, this weather produced record-breaking winter-time
demand for electricity at the same time that various adverse conditions
developed on the supply side.28 From an electric-generating
capacity point of view, power plant equipment froze, with over 48% of
the region’s total capacity unavailable at the highest point in the
outages. All types of generating technologies experienced outages, with
gas-fired capacity experiencing the highest amount of shut-down
equipment (as shown in the ERCOT chart (Figure 1), below).
Figure 1:
ERCOT Generating Capacity Outages Between February 14th and February
20th, 202129
- From a retail electricity consumer’s point of view, those wholesale
prices would equate to $6.6 (or even up to $9.0) for every unit of
electricity used during that period, if those electric costs were passed
through in retail prices. One electric industry expert calculated that a
large home heated by electricity in Texas would have paid $4,500 in high
electric bills for that week alone if that household’s electric service
agreement allowed for pass through of costs in the wholesale market.35
- Although most small electricity consumers in Texas purchase
electricity based on fixed prices, a small percentage of households do
buy power through products where the Retail Electricity Provider may
fully pass through costs in the wholesale market. Customers with such
service agreements are now getting eye-popping bills. And consumers
served by municipal and cooperative utilities will eventually end up
paying for their utilities’ higher costs from February.
- The ERCOT market monitor has calculated that decisions by the PUCT and
ERCOT during the crisis led to approximately $16 billion in overpriced
electricity, and recommended that the PUCT recalculate and revise prices
and payments retroactively36 — something that the PUCT has
elected not to do.37
- Meanwhile, state and federal investigations are underway to examine
the outages and whether any price manipulation may have occurred.38
Clearly, these recent events in Texas are a chilling reminder of the
critical role that reliable and resilient electricity plays in providing
basic needs and access to critical services to households, businesses
and other electricity consumers.
Research needs to enhance reliability and resilience of the
electric system
Although the Texas electricity crisis was an unusual event, to say the
least, there are many observers who have pointed out that such events
could happen elsewhere in the U.S., and that steps are needed to
proactively prepare the electric system to lower the risks of such
occurrences and to lessen their adverse impacts. Although Texas’ winter
weather in February 2021 was extraordinarily cold, and colder than
expected, it is now predictable that extreme weather events will occur
more frequently and be more intense as a result of climate change.39
Further, it is well-established that electric system infrastructure
(along with other energy infrastructure) is vulnerable to such extreme
weather events, with potentially risks to and costly impacts on human
lives, public health, and economic activity. As the National Academies’
2017 report on Enhancing the Resilience of the Electric Grid pointed
out:
Electricity and the underlying infrastructure for its production,
transmission, and distribution are essential to the health and
prosperity of all Americans. It is important to make investments that
increase the reliability of the power system within reasonable cost
constraints. However, the system is complex and vulnerable. Despite all
best efforts, it is impossible to avoid occasional, potentially large
outages caused by natural disasters or pernicious physical or cyber
attacks. This report focuses on large-area, long-duration
outages—considered herein as blackouts that last several days or longer
and extend over multiple service areas or states. When such major
electricity outages do occur, economic costs can tally in the billions
of dollars and lives can be lost. Hence, there is a critical need to
increase the resilience of the U.S. electric power transmission and
distribution system—so that major outages are less frequent, their
impacts on society are reduced, and recovery is more rapid—and to learn
from these experiences so that performance in the future is better.40
As I noted previously, I was a member of the Committee that prepared
that 2017 consensus report. We made a number of recommendations relating
to the need for greater research and development to support grid
resiliency, which I present below. I also provide (below) a number of
research-related recommendations from “The Future of Electric Power in
the United States” (2021), which is recent report from a different
Academies’ consensus committee on which I also served.41
While the latter report focused on a much broader set of issues than
enhancing the resilience of the electric system, it included grid
resilience as one of the five major needs for the future electric power
system42:
- mprove our understanding of how the system is evolving.
-
Ensure that electricity service remains clean and sustainable, and
reliable and resilient.
-
Improve understanding of how people use electricity and sustain the
“social compact” to
-
keep electricity affordable and equitable in the face of profound
technological changes.
-
Facilitate innovations in technology, policy and business models
relevant to the power system.
-
Accelerate innovations in technology in the face of shifting global
supply chains and the influx of disruptive technologies.
In the context of this Science Committee hearing, I call your attention
in particular to the Academies’ discussion and conclusion regarding the
essential role of federal support for RD&D on electric system issues:
The Department of Energy (DOE) is the federal entity with a mission to
focus on the longer-term issues of developing and promulgating
technologies and strategies to increase the resilience and modernization
of the electric grid. No other entity in the United States has the
mission to support such work, which is critical as the electricity
system goes through the transformational changes described in this
report. The committee views research, development, and demonstration
activities that support reliable and resilient electricity systems to
constitute a public good. If funding is not provided by the federal
government, the committee is concerned that this gap would not be filled
either by states or by the private sector. In part this is because the
challenges and solutions to ensuring grid resilience are complex, span
state and even national boundaries, and occur on time scales that do not
align with business models.43
In the rest of my testimony, I will excerpt parts of both Academies
reports, with a focus on their findings and recommendations that address
federally supported research needs for a secure and resilient grid.
The Academies’ 2017 Resiliency Report had several major overarching
recommendations related to these issues:
Overarching Recommendation 3: However the Department of
Energy chooses to organize its programs going forward, Congress and the
Department of Energy leadership should sustain and expand the
substantive areas of research, development, and demonstration that are
now being undertaken by the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity
Delivery and Energy Reliability and Office of Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy, with respect to grid modernization and systems
integration, with the explicit intention of improving the resilience of
the U.S. power grid. Field demonstrations of physical and cyber
improvements that could subsequently lead to widespread deployment are
critically important. The Department of Energy should collaborate with
parties in the private sector and in states and localities to jointly
plan for and support such demonstrations. Department of Energy efforts
should include engagement with key stakeholders in emergency response to
build and disseminate best practices across the industry.44
Overarching Recommendation 5: The Department of Energy,
together with the Department of Homeland Security, academic research
teams, the national laboratories, and companies in the private sector,
should carry out a program of research, development, and demonstration
activities to improve the security and resilience of cyber monitoring
and controls systems, including the following:
-
Continuous collection of diverse (cyber and physical) sensor data;
-
Fusion of sensor data with other intelligence information to
diagnose the cause of the impairment (cyber or physical);
-
Visualization techniques needed to allow operators and engineers to
maintain situational awareness;
-
Analytics (including machine learning, data mining, game theory, and
other artificial intelligence-based techniques) to generate
real-time recommendations for actions that should be taken in
response to the diagnosed attacks, failures, or other impairments;
-
Restoration of control system and power delivery functionality and
cyber and physical operational data in response to the impairment;
and
-
Creation of post-event tools for detection, analysis, and
restoration to complement event prevention tools.45
Additionally, the Academies’ 2017 Resiliency Report includes more
specific recommendations related to federally funded research needs for
the nation’s electric system:
Recommendation # 1 to DOE: Improve understanding of
customer and societal value associated with increased resilience and
review and operationalize metrics for resilience by doing the following:
Developing comprehensive studies to assess the value to customers of
improved reliability and resilience (e.g., periodic rotating service)
during large-area, long- duration blackouts as a function of key
circumstances (e.g., duration, climatic conditions, societal function)
and for different customer classes (e.g., residential, commercial,
industrial) (Study Report Recommendation 2.1)
Recommendation #2 to DOE: Support research,
development, and demonstration activities, as well as convening
activities, to improve the resilience of power system operations and
recovery by reducing barriers to adoption of innovative technologies and
operational strategies. These include the following:
-
Initiating and supporting ongoing research programs focused on the
operation of degraded or damaged electricity systems, including
supporting infrastructure and cyber monitoring and control systems,
where key subsystems are designed and operated to sustain critical
functionality. (Study Report Recommendation 4.6)
-
Continuing to support research and development of advanced large
power transformers, concentrating to conduct several demonstration
projects. (Study Report Recommendation 6.7)
Recommendation #3 to DOE: Advance the safe and
effective development of distributed energy resources (“DERs”) and
microgrids by doing the following:
-
Initiating research, development, and demonstration activities to
explore the extent to which DERs could be used to help prevent
large-area outages. (Study Report Recommendation 4.2)
-
Supporting demonstration and a training facility (or facilities) for
future microgrids that will allow utility engineers and non-utility
microgrid operators to gain hands-on experience with islanding,
operating, and restoring feeders (including microgrids). (Study
Report Recommendation 5.6)
Recommendation #4 to DOE: Work to improve the ability
to use computers, software, and simulation to research, plan, and
operate the power system to increase resilience by doing the following:
-
Collaborating with other research organizations, including the
National Science Foundation, to expand support for interdisciplinary
research to simulate events and model grid impacts and mitigation
strategies. (Study Report Recommendation 4.3)
-
Supporting and expanding research and development activities to
create synthetic power grid physical and cyber infrastructure
models. (Study Report Recommendation 4.4)
-
Collaborating with other research organizations, including the
National Science Foundation, to fund research on enhanced power
system wide-area monitoring and control and the application of
artificial intelligence to the power system. Such work should
include how the human–computer interface and visualization could
improve reliability and resilience. (Study Report Recommendation
4.8)
-
Leading efforts to develop standardized data definitions,
communication protocols, and industrial control system designs for
the sharing of both physical and cyber system health information.
(Study Report Recommendation 4.9)
-
Developing a high-performance utility network simulator for use in
cyber configuration and testing. (Study Report Recommendation 6.12)
Recommendation #5 to DOE: Work to improve the
cyber-security and other cyber resilience of the grid by doing the
following:
-
Embarking on a research, development, and demonstration program that
results in a prototypical cyber- physical-social control system
architecture for resilient electric power systems. (Study Report
Recommendation 4.10)
-
Developing the ability to apply physics-based modeling to anomaly
detection, which provides real-time or better physics models that
derive optimal power flow and monitor performance for more accurate
state estimation. (Study Report Recommendation 6.8)
The Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report explains the five needs of the
nation’s electric system which I listed above, and includes
recommendations relating to each one:
Regarding the first need—#1: Improving our understanding of how the system is
evolving—the report states that:
Because of many parallel changes in technology, patterns of electricity
consumption, and social expectations for electric power, it is more
difficult to forecast future electricity supply, demand, and
infrastructure today than it was a few decades ago. The tools for
forecasting electric futures need to be capable of adaptation because
the architecture of the grid will evolve in different ways in different
regions, and will adjust as the country reduces emissions of greenhouse
gases from the overall economy through decarbonizing the electric supply
and more pervasive use of electricity. As part of this effort, the
nation needs to build and test new tools for simulation and
experimentation to understand how the grid of the future will behave and
how operators and policy makers can ensure its continued
reliability.46
The Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report includes research
recommendations related to improving our understanding of how the
electric system is evolving:47
Recommendation 4.5: Government support for key
electricity research initiatives such as grid modernization and
development of technology necessary for deep decarbonization should be
sustained for sufficient periods of time to enable new areas of
discovery. Congress should appropriate multiyear (minimum of 5-year)
funding streams for proposed initiatives in key areas of national
interest such as those identified, and DOE should implement long-term
funding for projects that demonstrate alignment with critical national
needs, technical success, potential net economic benefits, and
cost-shared funding where appropriate. Such programs should follow best
practices that include ensuring that DOE program managers have the
knowledge and authority to oversee projects effectively and efficiently
and clear criteria to govern advancement of projects.
Recommendation 5.5: DOE should support a sustained
collaboration of national labs, academia, utilities, and vendors to
develop a family of intercompatible simulation tools that have common
standard interfaces to work together to assess the performance of the
present grids and better anticipate the implications of the various ways
the grid architectures may evolve in the future. As having a single
large integrated model of very large, complex grids is impractical, the
development and standardization of common interfaces between simulation
tools will enable the studies of evolving architectures of generation,
transmission, distribution, and ICT.
Recommendation 5.8: Because there will always be limits
to what can be learned through simulation, DOE should choose the most
promising new architectures indicated by large scale simulation studies
in order to identify and plan a number of large-scale field experiments
that could verify the advantages of such grid architectures under actual
operations. Such field experiments of grid architecture would be
qualitatively and quantitatively much larger in scope than the usual
prototyping of a component such as a storage device, and should be
reserved for when adequate resources and opportunities are available.
Recommendation 6.2: Owing to the increasing importance
of computing, communications, and control technologies for the operation
of the current and future grid, Congress should appropriate funds to the
National Science Foundation, in consultation with DOE, to specifically
focus on research programs exploring the implications and applications
of rapidly evolving computing, communications, and control technologies
on grid cybersecurity and cyber resiliency.
Regarding the second need for the future electric system—#2: Ensuring that electricity service remains clean and
sustainable, and reliable and resilient—the Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report states that:
Reducing emissions of CO2 and other environmental impacts of electricity
generation will remain a major challenge in the coming decades. While
the focus of the role of electricity generation on ambient air quality
may diminish as generation becomes less polluting, there is a growing
focus on increasing sustainability and addressing climate change, in
part through increased use of renewables. At high penetrations, this
will require increasing the capacity of high-voltage, multistate
transmission networks. The balance between reliability and resilience
may shift over time but excellent overall performance will remain
essential. The power system is vulnerable to a variety of natural events
and accidental as well as pernicious human physical and cyber-attacks
that can be minimized yet not eliminated entirely. New technologies,
along with continued investment in critical elements of the electric
power system, such as long-distance transmission and robust distributed
resources, will improve the nation’s capabilities. The nation, the
electric industry and other stakeholders need to do a better job of
educating and training people at all levels to design, reinforce,
manage, and run a resilient and effective electric system.
The Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report includes research
recommendations related to the need to ensure that electricity service
remains clean and sustainable, and reliable and resilient:48
Recommendation 4.7: Given the structural,
technological, economic, and operational changes under way in so many
regions of the U.S. electric industry, it will be important for the
federal government to fund and support research and analysis to help
mitigate operational and planning uncertainties. DOE should sponsor
research that will enhance the temporal flexibility of net electricity
demand and enhance other services vital to grid reliability through
pricing or other mechanisms. This will be important for supporting the
entry of resources and services that can meet states’ and consumers’
desires for low-carbon electricity supply.
Recommendation 5.1: To meet the challenge of
dramatically lowering U.S. CO2 emissions, DOE, EPRI, universities, and
industry should focus on developing: generation technologies with zero
direct CO2 emissions, low- carbon technologies with high dispatchability
and fast ramping capabilities, storage systems for multihour, multiday
and seasonal time-shifting; and power electronics to enable real-time
control of the grid.
Recommendation 6.1: DOE’s research program in grid
cybersecurity is an important source of innovation to improve the
resiliency of future grid infrastructure and operations. DOE should
develop a regularly updated R&D priority roadmap in collaboration with
the electric industry with input from academic and national lab
researchers, and the vendor community. The R&D priorities in the roadmap
should be funded by appropriations from Congress to DOE. The roadmap
should be oriented to develop and demonstrate new technologies for
resilient architectures that will enable energy delivery systems, and
any interconnected systems, to be designed, installed, operated, and
maintained to survive a cyber incident while sustaining critical
functionality and enabling quick recovery.
Regarding the third need for the future electric system—#3: Improving understanding of how people use electricity and
sustain the “social compact” to keep electricity affordable and
equitable in the face of profound technological changes—the Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report states that:
Already many changes in the grid reveal opportunities for new services
and configurations of electric resources. Some kinds of profound changes
in electric supply, such as some customers becoming less dependent on
grid- delivered power, could be highly disruptive to the social compact
that has been central to the electric power industry and its provision
of universal service for over a century. These changes could have large
impacts on customers with low incomes. It is crucial to build tools to
understand those needs along with devising regulatory responses to
evolve and selectively strengthen social compacts in light of changing
circumstances.
The Academies’ 2017 Electric Power Report includes a research-related
recommendation relevant to the need to improve our understanding of how
keep electricity affordable and equitable in the face of profound
technological changes third need for the future power system is:49
Recommendation 4.9: The increase in government funding
identified in Recommendation 4.8 [relating to substantial increases in
federal RD&D for the electric section, as discussed below under the
discussion of the fifth need for the future power system] should
include areas that have traditionally been neglected yet are vitally
important to the future of the electric power system. Those include
research to support planning, design, operation and control of grid
systems as they face new challenges such as deep decarbonization and the
need for resiliency against natural, manmade and cyber hazards. The
consortium and multiyear approach of the Grid Modernization Initiative
is a good model but must be funded reliably. Other traditionally
neglected areas of research include the social science needed to inform
policy and technology development.
Regarding the fourth need for the future electric system—#4: Facilitating innovations in technology, policy and business
models relevant to the power system—the Academies’ 2017 Electric Power Report states that:
New technologies, such as clean generation, wide electrification, energy
storage, power electronics, and systems for monitoring and control, can
enable large changes in the way the power system is organized and
operated. Especially large changes may occur in the distribution and
retail parts of the grid where the system meets people and non-utility
companies (the so-called grid edge”). While supply provided by central
generation and transmission and distribution wires will remain
essential, technical, policy and business-model changes could speed
innovation and the introduction of new services to consumers at the grid
edge. Understanding how electricity consumers behave, and how devices
and energy services can be aggregated for supply, and how such trends
affect system loads is emerging as one of most profound technological,
regulatory and planning challenges and opportunities facing the future
of the grid. That understanding requires situational awareness and
control across potentially tens of millions of nodes and at high rates
of response (milliseconds, not seconds). Such changes will require
flexible system planning and operations at both the bulk-power and local
levels.
The research-related recommendations related to the need to facilitate
innovations in technology, policy and business models relevant to the
power system include:50
Recommendation 3.6: With support from Congress and
state legislatures, DOE, state energy research organizations, and
foundations should provide support for social science research and
regulatory/policy analysis designed to identify and assess alternative
models for regulation, innovation and industry structure in the retail/
distribution segment of the electric system. Such research and analysis
efforts should also address opportunities and mechanisms to allow for
flexible demand and the value of doing so for electric system
performance, cost, and emissions. Such research and analysis should also
focus on the development and assessment of metrics to measure how
infrastructure investment decisions and authorized actions would affect
carbon emissions. Such work should involve and be informed by industry,
researchers at universities, think tanks and/or the national labs,
and/or other institutions with research programs in the following fields
(as well as others): energy economics, behavioral economics, public
policy analysis, law, finance, and utility regulation.
Recommendation 4.6: Greater deployment of advanced
electrical technology is essential and will require expanded support for
DOE-backed demonstration projects, including through loan programs and
support for industrial consortia that deploy critical technologies. Such
expanded support should follow best practices in the implementation of
technology demonstration and deployment programs. Programs should be
designed for rapid learning (and course corrections where needed) and
periodic assessment of the overall portfolio for its performance.
Proposals for funded projects should include a clear articulation of how
a demonstration could be commercialized including a budget for such
activities—so that a larger fraction of successful demonstration
projects lead to wider deployment.
Regarding the fifth need for the future electric system—#5: Accelerating innovations in technology in the face of shifting
global supply chains and the influx of disruptive
technologies—the Committee report states that:
Many of the basic power system technologies were first developed in the
United States. However, the supply chains and manufacturing for most
critical electric power system technologies have now moved offshore. The
United States has been underinvesting in the innovation needed for
future electric system performance. Massive new private and public
investments are needed in innovation, especially for more cutting-edge
technologies on which the future grid will depend. Policies are needed
to move supply chains and manufacturing for those technologies back to
the United States, while recognizing that innovation and manufacturing
are now global. The United States must balance competing goals—one to
gain from the advantages of a global search for innovative solutions and
the other to ensure U.S. control and awareness of and access to critical
grid infrastructure technologies. The advantages of engagement and
awareness of progress overseas will be particularly important where
grids are expanding in size and function, which facilitates testing,
demonstration, and deployment of new technology.
Research-related recommendations related to the need to accelerate
innovations in technology in the face of shifting global supply chains
and the influx of disruptive technologies include:51
Recommendation 4.8: In order to meet the challenge of
serving all Americans with safe, clean, affordable, reliable and
resilient electric power in a rapidly changing environment, while
building a stronger U.S. industrial base that can advance those goals,
Congress should increase substantially the overall level of support for
RD&D on the production, delivery and use of electric power. Increasing
such support too rapidly would lead to inefficiency and waste. This sets
an upper bound on the rate and amount of increase. Over the next decade,
support for basic science that is broadly related to electric power
should be doubled, and support for applied development and demonstration
related to electric power should be tripled.
Recommendation 5.2: The United States has lost ground
in the manufacturing of conventional grid-scale power control
technologies (e.g., HVDC and FACTS) and is deploying very little of
these advanced solutions. Developments in rapidly growing technologies,
such as PV, wind, EV, and energy storage, suggest a new paradigm may be
rapidly emerging which is more modular, distributed and edge-
intelligent, and which may be able to compete with and outperform the
existing grid paradigm in terms of sustainability, reliability,
resilience, and affordability. A rapidly changing paradigm for
electrical power and the grid offer a unique opportunity for U.S.
research and manufacturing to reclaim their global lead in this critical
area. DOE, EPRI, other domestic and international research
organizations, universities, and world-wide industry should identify
such “breakaway” threads early, work with industry, investors and
regulators to understand potential roadmap and impact. Then DOE, EPRI,
and industry should collaborate to develop and fund a research agenda
that creates fast-moving programs that help de-risk such solutions from
technology, market and regulatory perspectives.
Conclusion
I hope that the Committee considers my testimony as it determines how
the federal research agenda and programs might provide much-needed and
valuable greater support for research in support of a secure and
resilient electric system in the U.S.
Thank you for affording me this opportunity to present this information
and my opinions to the Committee.
******
Bio of Susan F. Tierney, Ph.D.
I am a Senior Advisor at Analysis Group, an economic consulting firm
headquartered in Boston, with other U.S. offices in California,
Colorado, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington, D.C., and with
international offices in Europe and Asia.
I have been involved in issues related to public utilities, ratemaking
and electric industry regulation, electric system reliability and
resilience, and energy and environmental economics and policy for over
35 years. During this period, I have worked on electric and gas
industry issues as a utility regulator and energy/environmental policy
maker, consultant, academic, and expert witness. I have been a
consultant and advisor to private and publicly owned energy companies,
grid operators, government agencies, large and small energy consumers,
environmental organizations, foundations, Indian tribes, and other
organizations on a variety of economic and policy issues in the energy
sector.
Before becoming a consultant, I held several senior governmental policy
positions in state and federal government, having been appointed by
elected executives from both political parties. I served as the
Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Energy. I held
senior positions in the Massachusetts state government as Secretary of
Environmental Affairs; Commissioner of the Department of Public
Utilities; Executive Director of the Energy Facilities Siting Council;
and chair of the Board of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.
My Masters degree and Ph.D. in regional planning are from Cornell
University. I previously taught at the University of California at
Irvine and at MIT. I am a member of the advisory councils at Columbia
University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, New York University’s
Institute for Policy Integrity, and Duke University’s Nicholas School
for the Environment.
I currently sit on several non-profit boards and commissions, including
as: chair of the boards of ClimateWorks Foundation and of Resources for
the Future; a trustee of the Barr Foundation; and a director of World
Resources Institute and of the Energy Foundation. I am currently a
member of two Committees of the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine: the Committee on Accelerating the
Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System; and the Committee on the
Future of Electric Power in the United States. I chair the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory’s External Advisory Council; I previously
chaired the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee,
and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee on
resiliency of the U.S. electric system. I serve on the NYISO’s
Environmental Advisory Council. I was co-lead convening author of the
Energy Supply and Use chapter of the Third National Climate Assessment.
I previously served on the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, and
chaired the Policy Subgroup of the National Petroleum Council’s study of
the North American natural gas and oil resource base.
After 35 years in Boston, I moved with my husband to his home state of
Colorado in 2016
******
ENDNOTES
1 I have provided my bio at the end of this testimony.
2 These three Academies committees on which I have served and
whose recommendations I discuss in this testimony are:
- Enhancing
the Resilience of the Nation’s Electric System (2017),
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24836/enhancing-the-resilience-of-the-nations-electricity-system
- The Future of Electric Power in the U.S. (2021),
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25968/the-future-of-electric-power-in-the-united-states
- Accelerating the Decarbonization in the United States:
Technology, Policy and Societal Dimensions (2021).
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25932/accelerating-decarbonization-of-the-us-energy-system
3 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine,
Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation’s Electricity System, 2017 (hereafter referred to as “Academies’ 2017 Resiliency Report”),
at
https://doi.org/10.17226/24836.
4 For example: Senate Energy and Natural Resources, Full
Committee Hearing on Reliability, Resiliency, And Affordability of
Electric Service, March 11, 2021, at
https://www.energy.senate.gov/hearings/2021/3/full-committee-hearing-on-the-reliability-resiliency-and-affordability-of-electric-service; Texas Legislature - Joint Hearing of State Affairs and Energy
Resources Committees, February 25, 2021, at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmFkAdEAcS0.
5 See: the Disaster Safe Power Grid Act, sponsored by
Senators Wyden and Merkley, at
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Disaster%20Safe%20Power%20Grid%20Act%20of%202021%20Bill%20Text.pdf.
6 Examples: CPS Energy v. ERCOT, March 12, 2021, as described
in Brendon Gibbons, “CPS Energy sues ERCOT, alleging ‘one of the largest
illegal wealth transfers in the history of Texas,’” San Antonio Report,
March 12, 2021, at
https://sanantonioreport.org/cps-energy-sues-ercot/; The State of Texas v. Griddy Energy LLC and Griddy Holdings LLC,
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2021/Press/01_Griddy%20Petition_2.28.21%20file%20stamped.pdf, as described in Attorney General Kenneth Paxton press release, March
1, 2021, at
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxton-sues-griddy-llc-energy-company-customers-hit-exorbitant-energy-bills.
7 For example: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission News
Release, “FERC, NERC to Open Joint Inquiry into 2021 Cold Weather Grid
Operations,” February 16, 2021, at
https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/ferc-nerc-open-joint-inquiry-2021-cold-weather-grid-operations; FERC News Release, “FERC to Examine Potential Wrongdoing in Markets
During Recent Cold Snap,” February 22, 2021, at
https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/ferc-examine-potential-wrongdoing-markets-during-recent-cold-snap;
Garrett Hering, “In the wake of the storm, Texas PUC opens probe
into outages,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, February 19, 2021, at
https://platform.marketintelligence.spglobal.com/web/client?auth=inherit&overridecdc=1news/article?KeyProductLinkType=2&id=62768135.
8 For example: International Association of Energy
Economists; Keystone Energy Board.
9 For example: Columbia University Center for Global Energy
Policy (“Making Sense of the Texas Energy Crisis,” February 22, 2021, at
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/making-sense-texas-energy-crisis); RFF Resources Radio (“Shedding Light on Electricity Blackouts, with
Severin Bornstein,” February 23, 2021, at
https://www.resources.org/resources-radio/shedding-light-on-electricity-blackouts-with-severin-borenstein/); RFF Resources Radio (“Illuminating the Future of Electric Power in
the United States, with Karen Palmer,” March 9, 2021,
https://www.resources.org/resources-radio/illuminating-the-future-of-electric-power-in-the-united-states-with-karen-palmer)/; Volts (David Roberts, “Lessons from the Texas mess,” February 23,
2021, at
https://www.volts.wtf/p/lessons-from-the-texas-mess).
10 For example: Robinson Meyer, “Texas Failed Because It Did
Not Plan,” The Atlantic, February 21, 2021, at
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/02/what-went-wrong-texas/618104/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20210221&silverid-ref=MzEwMTkwMjQxOTU4S0.
11 For example: Katherine Blunt and Russell Gold, “The Texas
Freeze: Why the Power Grid Failed,” The Wall Street Journal,
February 19, 2021, at
https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-freeze-power-grid-failure-electricity-market-incentives-11613777856; Russell Gold and Katherine Blunt, “Texas Grapples with Crushing Power
Bills After Freeze,” The Wall Street Journal, February 23,
2021, at
https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-grapples-with-crushing-power-bills-after-freeze-11614095953; Russell Gold and Katherine Blunt, “Amid Blackouts, Texas Scrapped Its
Power Market and Raised Prices. It Didn’t Work,”
The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2021, at
https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-power-regulators-decision-to-raise-prices-in-freeze-generates-criticism-11614268158.
12 For example: Alex Gilbert and Morgan Bazillian, “The Texas
electricity crisis and the energy transition,” Utility Dive,
February 19, 2021, at
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/the-texas-electricity-crisis-and-the-energy-transition/595315; Molly Christian, Zack Hale and Ellie Potter, “Experts mull market,
reliability rule changes amid Texas, regional outages,”
S&P Global Market Intelligence, February 16, 2021, at
https://platform.marketintelligence.spglobal.com/web/client?auth=inherit&overridecdc=1news/article?KeyProductLinkType=2&id=62688009; Edward Klump, “Texas Blackouts: 10 ways to fix the grid,” E&E News,
at
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063727199.
13 For example: Jay Apt and Luke Lavin, “Opinion: What is
happening in Texas will keep happening until we take action,”
Washington Post, February 18, 2021, at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/18/texas-power-grid-failure-weather/; Carl Pechman and Elliott Nethercutt, “Regulatory Questions Engendered
by the Texas Energy Crisis of 2021,” NRRI Insights, March 2021, at
https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/2AF1F2F3-155D-0A36-3107-99FCBC9A701C; Peter Cramton, “Ten myths of the 2021 Texas electricity crisis and
ten steps to avoid a repeat,” March 8, 2021.
14 Data for 2019 from U.S. Energy Information Administration,
State Electricity Profiles,
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/.
15 Although retail choice is mandatory for electricity
customers of investor-owned utilities, it is only available to customers
of municipal and cooperative utilities if the utility opts-in, something
that has rarely occurred.
https://www.puc.texas.gov/consumer/facts/faq/Muni.aspx;
https://quickelectricity.com/electricity-choice-in-texas-why-dont-all-texans-have-choice-in-electric-providers/.
16 “Although many economic experts in the electric industry
point to the success of the ERCOT market design as a model that should
be adopted and implemented in other regions, it is unlikely that that
approach—with its mandatory retail competition and an energy-only
centralized wholesale market—will be taken up in most (if any) other
regions of the U.S.” Susan Tierney, “Wholesale Power Market Design in a
Future Low-Carbon Electric System: A Proposal for Consideration,”
November 28, 2020, at
https://media.rff.org/documents/tierney-white-paper-on-wholesale-market-design-12-15-2020-final-to-wri-rff.pdf. Also, “Exporting the ERCOT model? It would surprise me if any other
states can or choose to pursue it, even if it has been successful there.
(And the jury is out about how well it would work with it is dominated
by zero-emitting resources, rather than 64% fossil.)” Susan Tierney,
“Wholesale Power Market Design in a Future Low-Carbon Electric System: A
Proposal for Consideration,” World Resources Institute/Resources for the
Future Workshop on market designs for the clean energy transition,
December 17, 2020, at
https://media.rff.org/documents/tierney-wri-rff-market-design-workshop_-_12-17-2020_v2.pdf.
17 James Robb, President and CEO of NERC, “Reliability,
Resiliency, and Affordability of Electric Service in the United States
Amid the Changing Energy Mix and Extreme Weather Events,” testimony
before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, March 11,
2021, at
https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/EB1D7E02-BC93-4DFF-A6A9-002341DA34CF.
18 Staffs of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the
North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “Report on Outages and
Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5,
2011: Causes and Recommendations” (hereafter referred to as the
“FERC/NERC Staff Report on 2011 Cold Weather Events”),
https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-report.pdf.
19 FERC/NERC Staff Report on 2011 Cold Weather Events.
20 FERC/NERC Staff Report on 2011 Cold Weather Events, page
196.
21 FERC/NERC Staff Report on 2011 Cold Weather Events, page
196.
22 FERC/NERC Staff Report on 2011 Cold Weather Events, page
202.
23 FERC/NERC Staff Report on 2011 Cold Weather Events, page
203.
24 FERC/NERC Staff Report on 2011 Cold Weather Events, page
214.
25 J.P. Finlay, “FERC/NERC report outlines steps to avoid
winter outages in Southwest,” S&P Global Market Intelligence,
August 16, 2011, at
https://platform.marketintelligence.spglobal.com/web/client?auth=inherit&overridecdc=1news/article?KeyProductLinkType=2&id=13185142.
26 Molly Christian, Zack Hale and Ellie Potter, “Experts mull
market, reliability rule changes amid Texas, regional outages,”
S&P Global Market Intelligence, February 16, 2021, at
https://platform.marketintelligence.spglobal.com/web/client?auth=inherit&overridecdc=1news/article?KeyProductLinkType=2&id=62688009.
27 ERCOT press release, “Extreme cold weather expected to
result in record electric use in ERCOT region,” February 11, 2021, at
http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/224996.
28 Bill Magness, “Review of February 2021 Extreme Cold
Weather Event,” ERCOT Presentation to Urgent ERCOT Board of Directors
Meeting ERCOT, February 24, 2021 (hereafter “ERCOT 2-24-201
Presentation”), at
http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/key_documents_lists/225373/2.2_REVISED_ERCOT_Presentation.pdf.
29 ERCOT 2-24-201 Presentation.
30 Department of Energy, Emergency Situation Report, February
17, 2021, at
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2021/02/f82/TLP_WHITE_DOE%20Situation%20Update_Cold%20%20Winter%20Weather_%20Report%20%232%20FIN.pdf.
31 ERCOT 2-24-201 Presentation;
https://www.smith.senate.gov/us-senator-tina-smith-calls-investigation-including-possible-price-gouging-massive-natural-gas-0.
32 ERCOT 2-24-201 Presentation.
33
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/19/texas-power-outage-winter-storm-deaths/;
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/19/texas-water-power-outages/.
34 ERCOT 2-24-201 Presentation.
35 Seth Blumsack, “What’s behind $15,000 electricity bills in
Texas?” The Conversation, February 24, 2021, at
https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-15-000-electricity-bills-in-texas-155822.
36 Letter from Potomac Economics to the Chair of the Public
Utility Commission of Texas, March 4, 2021, at
https://interchange.puc.texas.gov/Documents/51812_61_1114183.PDF.
37 Paul Ciampoli, “Texas PUC declines to take action in
response to report on $16 billion in additional costs,” March 8, 2021,
at
https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/texas-puc-declines-take-action-response-report-16-billion-additional-costs.
38 For example: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission News
Release, “FERC, NERC to Open Joint Inquiry into 2021 Gold Weather Grid
Operations,” February 16, 2021, at
https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/ferc-nerc-open-joint-inquiry-2021-cold-weather-grid-operations; FERC News Release, “FERC to Examine Potential Wrongdoing in Markets
During Recent Cold Snap,” February 22, 2021, at
https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/ferc-examine-potential-wrongdoing-markets-during-recent-cold-snap; Garrett Hering, “In the wake of the storm, Texas PUC opens probe into
outages,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, February 19, 2021, at
https://platform.marketintelligence.spglobal.com/web/client?auth=inherit&overridecdc=1news/article?KeyProductLinkType=2&id=62768135.
39 For example: Academies’ 2017 Resiliency Report”), at
https://doi.org/10.17226/24836; Government Accountability Office, “Electricity Grid Resilience:
Climate Change Is Expected to Have Far-Reaching Effects and DOE and FERC
Should Take Actions,” March 2021, at
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-423t; and J.M Melillo, T.C. Richmond, and G.W. Yohe,
Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National
Climate Assessment, U.S. Global Change Research Program, at
https://doi:10.7930/J0Z31WJ2.
40 Academies’ 2017 Resiliency Report (preface).
41 These two committees were chaired by M. Granger Morgan of
Carnegie Mellon University, and like Granger and myself, several other
members of the Future of the Electric System Committee also served on
the Resiliency Study: Anjan Bose of Washington State University; Terry
Boston, of Terry Boston LLC; Jeffrey Dagle of the Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory; William Sanders of Carnegie Mellon University; and
David Victor of the University of California, San Diego.
42 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,
The Future of Electric Power in the United States, 2021
(hereafter referred to as the “Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report”),
pages 3-7, at
https://doi.org/10.17226/25968.
43 Academies’ 2017 Resiliency Report, page 4.
44 Academies’ 2017 Resiliency Report, page 135.
45 Academies’ 2017 Resiliency Report, pages 135-136.
46 Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report, page 3.
47 Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report. These
recommendations (with their numbering reflecting the chapter in which
they appear) are summarized on pages 8-9 of the report, with related
discussion and findings found in chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the report.
48 Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report. These
recommendations are summarized on pages 9-13 of the report, with related
discussion and findings found in chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the report.
49 Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report. These
recommendation is summarized on page 13 of the report, with related
discussion and findings found in chapter 4 of the report.
50 Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report. These
recommendations are summarized on pages 8-9 of the report, with related
discussion and findings found in chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the report.
51 Academies’ 2021 Electric Power Report. These
recommendations (with their numbering reflecting the chapter in which
they appear) are summarized on pages 8-9 of the report, with related
discussion and findings found in chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the report.
*****
An archived webcast of the hearing can be found on
the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s Web site.