In an opinion piece in PNAS, SFI Professor Cris Moore, SFI External Professor Raissa D'Souza, and collaborators Charles Brummitt, Paul Hines, and Ian Dobson call for a transdisciplinary science of power grid reliability informed by improved modeling.
"Reliable electricity provides more than convenience; it fuels economies, governments, health care, education, and poverty reduction," the authors write.
As climate change increases weather disturbances, as increasing demand tests power supplies, as smart grid and renewable energy technologies make the grid more complex and distributed, and as we improve responses to inevitable power failures, a transdisciplinary understanding of power grid reliability and complexity informed by modeling becomes more critical.
"Validated models enable the next grand challenge: improve and transform power grids to meet 21st century pressures. Reliable electricity must reach more people demanding more energy in more places....These challenges span engineering, physics, complex networks, computational science, economics, and social sciences," plus ecology, the authors conclude.
Read the article in PNAS (July 23, 2013)