| dc.description.abstract | As technology evolves and the electric load changes, electric grids need to be modified to accommodate new threats and resources. One such threat is the increase of natural disasters due to climate change. Electrical grids around the globe need to be carefully designed to withstand disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, fires, and droughts.This paper focuses specifically on the Texas grid, as it is a stand-alone interconnection and has a synthetic model designed in PowerWorld to aid in the development of research. In the event of a natural disaster powerful enough to take out a few sizeable generators in one section of Texas, the whole state is vulnerable to blackout. In order to avoid this, Texas (and all grids) could implement intentional or “adaptive” islanding. The National Academies Report,Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System, describes adaptive islanding as, “The concept [of] predefining how to break apart the system in response to system events, by matching clusters of load and generation.” The following paper includes simulations of such on the synthetic grid modeled in PowerWorld. The results show that islanding the Texas grid successfully protects the state from a complete blackout, and maintains full functionality for both halves in the absence of an event.Therefore, this paper concludes that all grids should prepare an islanding plan in case of a natural disaster and coordinate with utilities to plan transmission lines which lend themselves to islanding. | en |
