Extreme weather preparedness a top concern for US utilities, Wi-SUN finds

New research from the Wi-SUN Alliance finds that advanced weather prediction tops the list of initiatives that US utilities are undertaking to ensure better network resilience.

Other top initiatives are renewable energy integration, grid modernisation and microgrids and disaster response and recovery plans.

Furthermore, the utilities are adopting new approaches to improve outage recovery times through advanced networking, with predictive maintenance analytics topping the list, followed by smart grid technologies and enhanced communications, as well as the use of drones and robotics to inspect assets.

Phil Beecher, President and CEO of the Wi-SUN Alliance, comments that extreme weather events are fast evolving from a rare occurrence to something that should be built into the risk profile of any utility company.

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“The emergence of smart grids, microgrids and other technologies, like predictive maintenance and fault finding, offers a way of controlling costs while increasing resilience and stability to help mitigate the impact of outages.”

But, he adds, “technologies like this are only as good as the underlying communications network to provide reliable and secure delivery of the data needed to deliver a truly smart grid.”

The research was conducted among more than 250 senior professionals in the US utilities and power sectors and highlights the role of new tools and technologies to help improve resilience and outage recovery times as weather events and environmental disasters become commonplace.

According to US Department of Energy data cited by the Wi-SUN Alliance, extreme weather conditions – from heatwaves to Arctic vortexes – have doubled power outages in the US over the past 20 years.

The research also founds that utilities recognise opportunities to integrate artificial intelligence technologies to address resilience, with viable use cases including energy consumption forecasting, automated fault detection and grid optimisation.

Looking ahead to the next five years building infrastructure resilience remains among the top issues, with others including security enhancement, customer-centric services, renewable energy integration and IoT integration and data analytics.

The study was conducted for the Wi-SUN Alliance by Censuswide in February 2024.