Climate Wire | The Department of Energy is creating a “superlab” to test power grids using simulated climate disasters.
Seven DOE laboratories will participate in the effort, which is set to begin next year. It will mimic cyberattacks aimed at causing shock and chaos in critical areas, and catastrophes such as power outages caused by hurricanes and massive wildfires in the west that collapse power lines.
Some of the foundations have already been created, such as the former Superlab and a recent research platform that allows the technical staff of seven far-flung labs to share information as if they were one.
One goal is to determine how to move the right mix of available clean power and storage from batteries, hydrogen, and hydroelectric systems to the right places.
A similar effort at the Pentagon would be called the War Game. As one DOE official put it, the goal of the energy exercise is for “everyone to give their best game and everyone to work together.”
It didn’t always happen. In 2017, his first SuperLab was too slow and suffered from “various delays,” according to a recent DOE report. Another event in 2021 had smaller ambitions, focused on quickly solving the power problems of a small city in Alaska.
The first one, held in January, involved only two DOE labs, used a large amount of simulation, and lasted only an hour.
Planned for late 2024, SuperLab will be even bigger.
“We maximize the potential of our national laboratories,” said Rob Hobsapian, engineer and principal researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
This exercise is designed to help scientists explore capabilities and gaps in emerging clean energy systems, including potential hazards from natural and man-made threats. Hobsapian said in an interview that it would address “big questions of national interest that no lab can handle alone.”
Hobsapian, a mechanical engineer who spent the first 20 years of his career working for defense companies and later at the Office of Naval Research, said military and industrial experts believe that dealing with climate change will create new vulnerabilities. He said he was starting to notice.
For example, moving away from petrol and diesel fuels may eventually leave cities with large fleets of electric vehicles with nowhere to charge during prolonged power outages.
“This is a global issue,” Hobsapian said, adding that in congested cities, where wind and solar power is often far from where it is needed, increasingly large storms have caused newly built power lines to explode. It added that it raised the prospect that it could destroy the
Hobsapian said U.S. cities can now withstand long winter storms by generating heat and electricity at large fossil-fuel power plants, but utility-scale storage facilities that can house renewable energy and nuclear power. pointed out that it should be replaced with
Hobsapian says the new power system needs protection from cyberattacks and more.
“Every day we come to work anticipating new problems in the future, which can be difficult to articulate. But it is important to create new and next-generation tools.” he said. Scientists. ”
Reprinted from E&E News with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides important news for energy and environmental professionals.
