How Can We Modernize the Power Grid?

Electrical grids across the world are facing extreme weather events, failures due to aging infrastructure, increasing demand due to data center and artificial intelligence proliferation, and a massive shift toward renewable energy, surfacing opportunities as well as unprecedented challenges for the utilities industry as it strives to both modernize and harden grids and related infrastructure. 

In their new book, "The Sustainable Power Grid: Challenges, Applications, and Case Studies," Exponent's multidisciplinary and utility industry experts Nareg Sinenian, Michelle Kuykendal, Morgan Griffith, Brian McDonald, Gitanjali Bhattacharjee, Ezra Jampole, Shaun Cruz, Craig Steigerwalt, Melissa Mendias, Rita Garrido Menacho, Maqsood Ali Mughal, Peter Lindahl, and Sneha Lele explore the obstacles facing electrical grids and describe practical ways to overcome them. Published by Elsevier, the book leverages case studies, engineering methods, project management skills, and more to explore potential solutions to the critical questions defining the future for utilities. 

Areas covered in the book include electric vehicles and the grid, artificial intelligence and sustainable power, risk-based health assessment frameworks for overhead powerlines, interconnecting power grids, energy storage, solar power, and health and safety advances in power generation and transmission.

• Chapter 1: Advances in power converters
• Chapter 2: Artificial intelligence and sustainable power
• Chapter 3: A quantitative risk-based framework for asset health assessment of overhead lines
• Chapter 4: State estimation of AC/DC power systems 
• Chapter 5: Interconnecting the power grid
• Chapter 6: Power efficiency through energy scavenging
• Chapter 7: Energy storage system safety and compliance
• Chapter 8: Concentrating solar power and thermal energy storage system technologies and case studies
• Chapter 9: Empowering a resilient grid: Navigating the environmental challenges of photovoltaic system integration
• Chapter 10: Health and safety advances in power engineering