Powerless?

 

It looks like the damage wreaked by Hurricane Helene is going to last a whole lot longer than people might wish.  The electrical grid in North Carolina and Georgia looks to have suffered really severe damage.

"Distribution transformers are a bedrock component of our energy infrastructure," National Renewable Energy Laboratory researcher Killian McKenna said, who was recently quoted by PV Magazine. 

McKenna pointed out, "But utilities needing to add or replace them are currently facing high prices and long wait times due to supply chain shortages. This has the potential to affect energy accessibility, reliability, affordability—everything."

Other reasons for the transformer shortages besides power grid upgrades include raw material sourcing problems, pandemic-related supply chain woes and backlogs, labor constraints, shipping issues, and geopolitical tensions. 

Given all of this, Jesse D. Jenkins, an assistant professor and macro-energy systems engineering and policy expert at Princeton University, responded to the dire situation of a grid apocalypse playing out in the Southeast US:  "This is devastating. We do NOT have 360 substations worth of transformers and other electrical equipment sitting in stockpiles waiting to be deployed. It could take a very long time to restore power to everyone. Are we facing a Hurricane Maria-type impact on grid infrastructure?"

Making matters worse for residents of North Carolina, some X users are pointing out the Biden-Harris administration supplied transformers to Ukraine. It's unclear if these transformers were drained for US stockpiles. Meanwhile, others note that Ukraine uses a different electrical system than the US.

What's not questionable is this: Earlier this year, US ambassador to Kyiv Bridget Brink jumped for joy on X, indicating United States Agency for International Development delivered "50 voltage transformers, 9 current transformers, & 80 isolators."

There's more at the link.

I had an interesting exchange on that subject with a correspondent today.  He's a retired electrical engineer who spent his career with major utilities and power transmission systems.  He said he's hearing from former colleagues that an unspecified federal agency is approaching major power utilities in multiple states, asking them to shut down one or two sub-stations in major urban areas and make their equipment available to hurricane-affected areas.  The utilities are being reassured that this would "only" mean that they'd have to cut power for "an hour or two at a time" to nearby suburbs, rotating the load among their other sub-stations.  This would "share the survivors' load" with their customers, who would surely not complain at being asked to provide relief of this kind.  He told me that the utilities concerned (at least, the ones where he has contacts) are refusing to even consider the proposal, on the grounds that if they were to shut down local consumers because areas hundreds or even thousands of miles away had problems, those same consumers would start shooting at their trucks (and their workers) as they tried to dismantle and haul away the selected sub-stations.  Sounds to me like they know their customers!

The extent of the fallout from Hurricane Helene's damage has only just begun to be realized.  It's going to take, not months, but years to get over the worst of it.  To name just a few points:

• The demand for domestic generators in the affected areas is already off the charts, and if sub-stations can't be restored, they'll be in use for months - something consumer-grade generators are not designed to do.
• Can consumers afford the fuel cost to run them, and also to replace them when they wear out - and will replacements be available?
• Meanwhile, what happens if a major international crisis threatens or delays the ordering and/or shipment of replacement sub-station and transmission line equipment from China - apparently the only country that now manufactures much of what's needed?

Got batteries?

Peter