Professor of electrical engineering, Masood Parvania, has been featured in a new article by KUER discussing the hurdles power companies face in extreme weather.
Parvania does extensive research in grid resiliency from both cyber and physical threats such as natural disasters and is currently leading two federal grants for a total of $6.4 million to solve this problem. In the article, he points out that the cost of completely weatherproofing the grid is not worth the benefit just yet but that Rocky Mountain Power has been taking steps in the right direction.
“Just like the pandemic caught the whole medical community by surprise, these are also surprises we get in the utility and power world,” Parvania told KUER. “I think they are diligent and they are doing as much as they can, but some of the things that nature does are not really predictable.”
Read more about how power companies are combating extreme weather in the full article here.