Electricity Today T&D Magazine

If you wanted to create a recipe for disaster, the beginning of the 2021 wildfire season would be a good place to start. Nearly 90% of the western U.S. is suffering through extreme drought. The snowpack set new low levels there as well. A record-breaking heatwave steamrolled the Pacific Northwest with extreme temperatures hitting 116 °F in Portland. Mix all of this together, and you get a tinderbox ready to explode.
The last decade has been brutal as wildfires have raged across the West, Southwest, and Southern states. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, 2021 is shaping up to...

The rapid shift toward renewable energy resources (RERs) has placed significant demands on traditional power systems. To address these challenges, modern energy infrastructure is evolving into smart grids, leveraging advanced technologies like Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) to enhance grid flexibility, reliability, and efficiency. A VPP is a collection of distributed energy resources (DERs), such as renewable energy sources, battery storage, controllable loads, and electric vehicles (EVs), that operate as a unified power plant through intelligent control and communication networks. By integrating VPPs with smart grids, the energy sector can better coordinate energy generation, storage, and consumption, facilitating a more resilient...