A massive winter storm is continuing to hit the eastern United States, bringing dangerous ice and freezing rain. The storm has left more than a million customers across multiple states without power. Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and other Southern states have been particularly hard hit, and officials warned that outages could persist for days or longer.
The storm’s immediate effects include downed power lines and interruptions to electricity service for a large number of customers. Freezing rain and ice make trees and branches heavy, which can damage above-ground electrical equipment. Local resources for repair and restoration have been stretched by the scale of the damage, and it is not yet clear how long full restoration will take.
Sara Eftekharnejad, an associate professor at Syracuse University, studies power system stability, reliability and the integration of renewable energy into electrical grids. Experts are using events like this storm to consider how to improve grid reliability and how renewable sources interact with overall grid stability.
Difficult words
- outage — a period when electric power is not availableoutages
- interruption — a temporary stop or break in a serviceinterruptions
- restoration — the process of making a system work again
- reliability — ability of a system to work without failure
- stability — state of staying steady and not changing
- integration — the act of adding parts into a whole system
- renewable energy — energy from natural sources that do not run out
- grid — a network of power lines that delivers electricitygrids
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Discussion questions
- How would a long power outage affect your daily life and routines? Give one or two examples.
- What local changes or ideas could help the electrical grid handle severe winter storms better?
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