CAREER: CAS- Climate: Navigating a Two-Front Challenge for the Power Grid: Extreme Weather and the Race to Decarbonization

极端天气事件（热浪和寒流，干旱，野火，猛烈的风暴和洪水）每年以设备损坏，服务中断和电力市场价格冲击的形式使美国电力部门损失250亿至700亿美元。与此同时，为了防止气候变化的最坏影响，电力部门必须通过增加对风能和太阳能的依赖来快速脱碳，从而为电网带来新的天气风险。如果不能驾驭电网日益增长和日益复杂的天气风险和极端事件，可能会大大减缓社会脱碳的努力，使其成本更高。对于电力公司来说，极端天气事件表现为成本的大幅意外增加。要么这些必须传递给客户，要么它们使公用事业公司更难以履行偿债义务，导致信用评级下调和借款利率上升，从而在电网需要数万亿美元投资以实现脱碳目标的时候增加基础设施成本。这项研究将广泛探索美国电网不同部分的这些动态，开发新的见解，解决对社会至关重要的两个主要科学问题：1）极端天气，表现为电力市场的价格和可靠性冲击，将如何影响脱碳成本？2）低碳技术的采用将如何改变电网对极端天气的暴露？此外，PI将通过开发新课程“天气风险与电网”来推进跨学科研究生和本科教育。与北卡罗来纳州自然科学博物馆合作，PI将通过博物馆的科学咖啡馆晚间演讲系列参与成人和K-12教育活动。研究将把有关自然灾害，电力系统，电力市场和公用事业融资，以探索美国电力部门管理极端天气和减少温室气体排放。研究人员将建立一个改进的范例，用于建模电力系统中的天气风险，该模型考虑了自然资源，气候，基础设施和人类机构的异质性。一个统一的线程贯穿始终，一个主要的研究目标，是开源系统分析框架的开发和应用，能够代表网格的复杂动态在足够的规模和分辨率来模拟极端天气的影响。该框架将在四个研究项目的“组合”中开发和应用，每个项目都解决了电网利益相关者面临的不同天气风险和挑战。教育和研究生培训计划的一个相应的主要目标是扩大STEM学生在电力部门发挥的相对狭窄的作用。参与拟议的研究和教育计划将使一批新的科学家和工程师在地球系统工程，电力系统分析以及金融和经济学方面具有独特的专业知识和相关技术技能，使他们能够为电网的“两个前线”贡献跨学科的理解和解决方案该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Extreme weather events (heat waves and cold snaps, droughts, wildfires, violent storms, and flooding) cost the U.S. electric power sector between $25 and $70 billion per year in the form of damaged equipment, service outages, and price shocks in electricity markets. At the same time, in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change, the electric power sector must decarbonize quickly by increasing reliance on wind and solar, thus introducing a new source of weather risk for the grid. Failure to navigate the power grid’s growing and increasingly complex exposure to weather risk and extreme events could significantly slow society’s efforts to decarbonize by making it more expensive to do so. For electric power utilities, extreme weather events manifest as large, unexpected increases in costs. Either these must pass to customers, or they make it more difficult for utilities to meet debt service obligations, leading to credit downgrades and higher interest rates on borrowed sums, thereby increasing infrastructure costs at a time when the grid requires trillions of dollars of investment to meet decarbonization goals. This research will broadly explore these dynamics across different sections of the U.S. grid, developing new insights that address two major science questions of critical importance to society: 1) How will extreme weather, manifesting as price and reliability shocks in electricity markets, affect the cost of decarbonization? and 2) How will increased adoption of low carbon technologies alter the exposure of the grid to extreme weather? In addition, the PI will advance cross-disciplinary graduate and undergraduate education with the development of a new course: “Weather Risk and the Grid”. In conjunction with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, the PI will engage in adult and K-12 educational activities through the museum’s Science Café evening speaker series.The research will weave together new and existing knowledge about natural hazards, power systems, electricity markets and utility finance in order to explore interdependencies and feedbacks between the U.S. power sector’s efforts to manage extreme weather and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The investigator will establish an improved paradigm for modeling weather risk in power systems that accounts for heterogeneity in natural resources, climate, infrastructure, and human institutions. A unifying thread throughout, and a major research objective, is the development and application of open source systems analysis frameworks capable of representing the complex dynamics of the grid at sufficient scale and resolution to model the effects of extreme weather. This framework will be developed and applied across a “portfolio” of four research projects, each of which addresses a different set of weather risks and challenges facing grid stakeholders. A corresponding, major goal of the educational and graduate training program is to expand the relatively narrow role STEM students play in the electric power sector. Participation in the proposed research and education program will equip a new cohort of scientists and engineers with a unique combination of expertise and relevant technical skills in earth systems engineering, power systems analysis, and finance and economics, allowing them to contribute interdisciplinary understanding and solutions to the grid’s “two front” challenge of managing weather risk while quickly decarbonizing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.