What it will take to adapt the power grid to higher wildfire risks

Science News quotes Sayanti Mukherjee, assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, in an article about what it will take to adapt the nation’s energy grid to the increased risk of wildfires. Mukherjee said the grid could be redesigned to feed electricity into smaller, more isolated microgrids.

“The key benefit of a microgrid is that it can go into ‘island mode’” — disconnecting from the main power grid and switching to a local energy source in an emergency. “That way, we can prevent mass power outages for thousands of people who aren’t even getting directly affected by the wildfires,” she says. 

Read the article here.