Hardening Energy Assets with Data-Driven Modelling

Hardening Energy Assets – Though weather-related power outages are nothing new, the increased frequency of extreme weather events brought on by climate change means power system breakdowns are becoming more common. However, as more customers are affected by outages, those very occurrences are driving beneficial change by exposing the flaws in our old energy networks. 
 
Arron Lewis, vice president of energy utilities in Black & Veatch’s Energy & Process Industries unit, argues in a recent piece for Electric Energy Online that the increase in outages is prompting utilities to seek hardening solutions, which leads to data-driven modelling. 
 
Utilities could take a number of steps to protect their assets from storms. When over 500 U.S. respondents were polled for Black & Veatch’s 2021 Electric Report, they said.

Hardening Energy Assets

This is unsurprising, given that data-driven modelling and risk analysis may reduce the risk of failure and unexpected downtime by analyzing data and extracting actionable metrics. Utilities can monitor a wide range of operational indicators using these instruments, which include flood sensors, artificial intelligence-enabled cameras, drones that can detect damaged or at-risk equipment, temperature monitoring for both hot and cold weather risks, and much more. 
 
As utilities prepare for more extreme weather occurrences in the future, these technologies can provide the information needed to make educated investment and upgrade decisions. Data-driven modelling holds the key to the power grid’s climate adaptation because it can monitor the real-time health of energy infrastructure assets. 

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