EPRI
Andrew Phillips is VP of T&D Infrastructure at the Electric Power Research Institute.
The PUF team spoke with some of the leaders of the Climate REsilience and ADaptation Initiative to harden systems for the more adverse environmental conditions ahead. Here in this special feature are conversations with the Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the COO of Southwest Power Pool, the General Secretary of Europe's electric industry association, and two leaders at EPRI.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: You're a VP of T&D at EPRI. How do you and your group fit into Climate READi?
Andrew Phillips: There are three workstreams. The first is how to take this climate data and project it out for the next fifty years and use it in a useful way.
The second part is what is the vulnerability? How do we assess the vulnerability of assets, from the generator all the way to the customer.
In my team's case, the focus is on overhead lines, underground lines, and substations. Then what are the mitigations that can be put in place?
The final part is how do you look at all of the options to mitigate, assign value to them, and determine which ones to invest in so that society receives the maximum amount of value? The proposed mitigations need to be ranked together with standard reliability projects.