Resilience Hubs: Bolstering the Grid and Empowering Communities

The increased frequency, duration, and intensity of extreme weather events happening around the globe are an immediate threat to the ability of power grids to provide reliable power to customers. In September 2017, Hurricane Maria swept across the Caribbean, causing massive destruction in Puerto Rico, leading to more than 4,000 deaths and more than US${\$}$90 billion in damages. The Puerto Rican power system was devastated, with 80% of utility poles and transmission lines downed and only 20% of its generation capacity operable 30 days after the storm. It ultimately took 328 days to fully restore power to the island, marking the largest blackout in the history of the United States and the second largest in the world. In February 2021, three severe winter storms caused the worst energy infrastructure failure in Texas history. Record-low temperatures, ice, and sleet combined to force large-scale generation failure, causing more than 4.5 million homes to go without power and resulting in more than 240 deaths. Limited contingency reserves and few external grid interconnections limited the amount of power that could be imported as the generation went down. The impacts of the storm also reached the electricity markets, where the wholesale price of energy massively fluctuated, peaking at US${\$}$9,000/MWh.