The Texas Storm Crisis is Proof Big Data is Critical in Delivering Quality Services
By Tiffany Rose Miller
The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) of the Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced the award of $7.6 million in federal funding to invest in big data development. As cities across the United States become more intelligent and driven by technology, the DOE has amplified how important this funding is needed in order to deliver quality services to its customers.
Not too long after this announcement, all eyes were on Texas as it was braced with freezing temperatures, mass power outages, casualties, and lack of adequate heat. How could it be that the country’s leading energy producing state went dark?
Texas is known as one of the few states in America to have an independent power grid, not relying on other states to help provide power to their residents. When you rely heavily on nuclear plants, coal plants and thermal energy generators to provide electricity to your residents, you don’t expect the demand to exceed the supply.
However, on February 10th, 2021, millions were left without power in near freezing temperatures as Texas battled its first snowstorm in decades, well exceeding the demand energy companies expected. With the stress of high demand reaching record high levels, the issue became critical when these independent generators began to go offline at a rapid pace, with no additional energy source to compensate.
Frantic to get the issue under control the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), opted to raise energy prices for its customers “in order to reflect supply constraints driven by heightened demand during the winter storm.” This is called surge pricing where businesses are able to set their own flexible prices for services based on current market demands, a practice that is completely legal for a deregulated state like Texas that gives customers the option to choose where they get their energy source from. The problem with this practice? Surge pricing can increase by more than 100%!
Big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning technology is critical at preventing these disasters because it helps check the sensor data to monitor the health of these power grids and also helps support system operations. This helps energy companies recognize and have the information to account for discrepancies that may cause power outages before it happens. With this information, it’ll maintain vital infrastructure throughout communities.
According to Dr. Kezunovic, a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, algorithms do not exist today to monitor to the health of power grids. “Operators have to interpret the recordings using manual inspection, which is tedious, quite often inconsistent and most importantly overwhelming when a large number of recordings is available,” he said.
Without big data being incorporated into our energy systems, manual inspections of power grids and energy sources will be less effective as our cities become more heavily reliable on advanced technology.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/us/texas-electricity-ercot-blackouts.html
