Americans' safety, productivity, comfort, and convenience depend on the reliable supply of electric power. The electric power system is a complex "cyber-physical" system composed of a network of millions of components spread out across the continent. These components are owned, operated, and regulated by thousands of different entities. Power system operators work hard to assure safe and reliable service, but large outages occasionally happen. Given the nature of the system, there is simply no way that outages can be completely avoided, no matter how much time and money is devoted to such an effort. The system's reliability and resilience can be improved but never made perfect. Thus, system owners, operators, and regulators must prioritize their investments based on potential benefits. Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System focuses on identifying, developing, and implementing strategies to increase the power system's resilience in the face of events that can cause large-area, long-duration outages: blackouts that extend over multiple service areas and last several days or longer. Resilience is not just about lessening the likelihood that these outages will occur. It is also about limiting the scope and impact of outages when they do occur, restoring power rapidly afterwards, and learning from these experiences to better deal with events in the future.

The electric power delivery system that carries electricity from large central generators to customers could be severely damaged by a small number of well-informed attackers. The system is inherently vulnerable because transmission lines may span hundreds of miles, and many key facilities are unguarded. This vulnerability is exacerbated by the fact that the power grid, most of which was originally designed to meet the needs of individual vertically integrated utilities, is being used to move power between regions to support the needs of competitive markets for power generation. Primarily because of ambiguities introduced as a result of recent restricting the of the industry and cost pressures from consumers and regulators, investment to strengthen and upgrade the grid has lagged, with the result that many parts of the bulk high-voltage system are heavily stressed. Electric systems are not designed to withstand or quickly recover from damage inflicted simultaneously on multiple components. Such an attack could be carried out by knowledgeable attackers with little risk of detection or interdiction. Further well-planned and coordinated attacks by terrorists could leave the electric power system in a large region of the country at least partially disabled for a very long time. Although there are many examples of terrorist and military attacks on power systems elsewhere in the world, at the time of this study international terrorists have shown limited interest in attacking the U.S. power grid. However, that should not be a basis for complacency. Because all parts of the economy, as well as human health and welfare, depend on electricity, the results could be devastating. Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System focuses on measures that could make the power delivery system less vulnerable to attacks, restore power faster after an attack, and make critical services less vulnerable while the delivery of conventional electric power has been disrupted.

The groundbreaking book that details the fundamentals of reliability modeling and evaluation and introduces new and future technologies Electric Power Grid Reliability Evaluation deals with the effective evaluation of the electric power grid and explores the role that this process plays in the planning and designing of the expansion of the power grid. The book is a guide to the theoretical approaches and processes that underpin the electric power grid and reviews the most current and emerging technologies designed to ensure reliability. The authors—noted experts in the field—also present the algorithms that have been developed for analyzing the soundness of the power grid. A comprehensive resource, the book covers probability theory, stochastic processes, and a frequency-based approach in order to provide a theoretical foundation for reliability analysis. Throughout the book, the concepts presented are explained with illustrative examples that connect with power systems. The authors cover generation adequacy methods, and multi-node analysis which includes both multi-area as well as composite power system reliable evaluation. This important book: • Provides a guide to the basic methods of reliability modeling and evaluation • Contains a helpful review of the background of power system reliability evaluation • Includes information on new technology sources that have the potential to create a more reliable power grid • Addresses renewable energy sources and shows how they affect power outages and blackouts that pose new challenges to the power grid system Written for engineering students and professionals, Electric Power Grid Reliability Evaluation is an essential book that explores the processes and algorithms for creating a sound and reliable power grid.

Electricity, supplied reliably and affordably, is foundational to the U.S. economy and is utterly indispensable to modern society. However, emissions resulting from many forms of electricity generation create environmental risks that could have significant negative economic, security, and human health consequences. Large-scale installation of cleaner power generation has been generally hampered because greener technologies are more expensive than the technologies that currently produce most of our power. Rather than trade affordability and reliability for low emissions, is there a way to balance all three? The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies considers how to speed up innovations that would dramatically improve the performance and lower the cost of currently available technologies while also developing new advanced cleaner energy technologies. According to this report, there is an opportunity for the United States to continue to lead in the pursuit of increasingly clean, more efficient electricity through innovation in advanced technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies makes the case that America's advantagesâ€"world-class universities and national laboratories, a vibrant private sector, and innovative states, cities, and regions that are free to experiment with a variety of public policy approachesâ€"position the United States to create and lead a new clean energy revolution. This study focuses on five paths to accelerate the market adoption of increasing clean energy and efficiency technologies: (1) expanding the portfolio of cleaner energy technology options; (2) leveraging the advantages of energy efficiency; (3) facilitating the development of increasing clean technologies, including renewables, nuclear, and cleaner fossil; (4) improving the existing technologies, systems, and infrastructure; and (5) leveling the playing field for cleaner energy technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies is a call for leadership to transform the United States energy sector in order to both mitigate the risks of greenhouse gas and other pollutants and to spur future economic growth. This study's focus on science, technology, and economic policy makes it a valuable resource to guide support that produces innovation to meet energy challenges now and for the future.

This book collects selected high-quality papers published in 2018–2020 to inaugurate the “Natural Hazards” Section of the Geosciences journal. The topics encompass: trends in publications at international level in the field of natural hazards research; the role of Big Data in natural disaster management; assessment of seismic risk through the understanding and quantification of its different components; climatic/hydro-meteorological hazards; and finally, the scientific analysis and disaster forensics of recent natural hazard events. The target audience includes not only specialists, but also graduate students who wish to approach the challenging, but also fascinating

This book presents essential methods and tools for research into the reliability of energy systems. It describes in detail the content setting, formalisation, and use of algorithms for assessing the reliability of modern, large, and complex electric power systems. The book uses a wealth of tables and illustrations to represent results and source information in a clear manner. It discusses the main operating conditions which affect the reliability of electric power systems, and describes corresponding computing tools which can help solve issues as they arise. Further, all methodologies presented here are demonstrated in numerical examples. Though primarily intended for researchers and practitioners in the field of electric power systems, the book will also benefit general readers interested in this area.