Jason Daley | Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison | May 3, 2021
The resilience of the power grid has been in the news a lot in recent years: Transmission equipment, for example, sparked some of the largest fires in California history in 2018, leading to rolling blackouts, and the February 2021 cold snap in Texas shut off power to millions for days on end.
While those incidents were high-profile, they repeat across the nation on a smaller scale hundreds of times per year. In fact, it’s estimated that severe weather alone causes about $44 billion in power outage costs annually in the United States. As climate change alters weather patterns, it’s likely weather-related outages will increase. That’s why Line Roald, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will study ways to mitigate these problems through a research project funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Roald will use the five-year, $500,000 grant to develop risk assessment methods to quantify short-term operational risk to electric distribution grids.
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