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1. Quantifying cascading power outages during climate extremes considering renewable energy integration

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57565-4  

   Xu, Luo; Lin, Ning; Poor, H Vincent; Xi, Dazhi; Perera, A_T D (March 2026, Nature Communications)

   Climate extremes, such as hurricanes, combined with large-scale integration of environment-sensitive renewables, could exacerbate the risk of widespread power outages. We introduce a coupled climate-energy model for cascading power outages, which comprehensively captures the impacts of climate extremes on renewable generation, and transmission and distribution networks. The model is validated with the 2022 Puerto Rico catastrophic blackout during Hurricane Fiona – a unique system-wide blackout event with complete records of weather-induced outages. The model reveals a resilience pattern that was not captured by the previous models: early failure of certain critical components enhances overall system resilience. Sensitivity analysis on various scenarios of behind-the-meter solar integration demonstrates that lower integration levels (below 45%, including the current level) exhibit minimal impact on system resilience in this event. However, surpassing this critical level without pairing it with energy storage can exacerbate the probability of catastrophic blackouts. 

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2. The Potential Impact of Climate Change on the Efficiency and Reliability of Solar, Hydro, and Wind Energy Sources

   https://doi.org/10.3390/land11081275  

   Bhatt, Uma S.; Carreras, Benjamin A.; Barredo, José Miguel; Newman, David E.; Collet, Pere; Gomila, Damiá (August 2022, Land)

   Climate change impacts the electric power system by affecting both the load and generation. It is paramount to understand this impact in the context of renewable energy as their market share has increased and will continue to grow. This study investigates the impact of climate change on the supply of renewable energy through applying novel metrics of intermittency, power production and storage required by the renewable energy plants as a function of historical climate data variability. Here we focus on and compare two disparate locations, Palma de Mallorca in the Balearic Islands and Cordova, Alaska. The main results of this analysis of wind, solar radiation and precipitation over the 1950–2020 period show that climate change impacts both the total supply available and its variability. Importantly, this impact is found to vary significantly with location. This analysis demonstrates the feasibility of a process to evaluate the local optimal mix of renewables, the changing needs for energy storage as well as the ability to evaluate the impact on grid reliability regarding both penetration of the increasing renewable resources and changes in the variability of the resource. This framework can be used to quantify the impact on both transmission grids and microgrids and can guide possible mitigation paths. 

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3. Meteorological drivers of resource adequacy failures in current and high renewable Western U.S. power systems

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41875-6  

   Sundar, Srihari; Craig, Michael T.; Payne, Ashley E.; Brayshaw, David J.; Lehner, Flavio (October 2023, Nature Communications)

   Abstract Power system resource adequacy (RA), or its ability to continually balance energy supply and demand, underpins human and economic health. How meteorology affects RA and RA failures, particularly with increasing penetrations of renewables, is poorly understood. We characterize large-scale circulation patterns that drive RA failures in the Western U.S. at increasing wind and solar penetrations by integrating power system and synoptic meteorology methods. At up to 60% renewable penetration and across analyzed weather years, three high pressure patterns drive nearly all RA failures. The highest pressure anomaly is the dominant driver, accounting for 20-100% of risk hours and 43-100% of cumulative risk at 60% renewable penetration. The three high pressure patterns exhibit positive surface temperature anomalies, mixed surface solar radiation anomalies, and negative wind speed anomalies across our region, which collectively increase demand and decrease supply. Our characterized meteorological drivers align with meteorology during the California 2020 rolling blackouts, indicating continued vulnerability of power systems to these impactful weather patterns as renewables grow. 

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4. Grid-Forming Converters for Stability Issues in Future Power Grids

   https://doi.org/10.3390/en15144937  

   Khan, Shahid Aziz; Wang, Mengqi; Su, Wencong; Liu, Guanliang; Chaturvedi, Shivam (July 2022, Energies)

   Historically, the power system has relied on synchronous generators (SGs) to provide inertia and maintain grid stability. However, because of the increased integration of power-electronics-interfaced renewable energy sources, the grid’s stability has been challenged in the last decade due to a lack of inertia. Currently, the system predominantly uses grid-following (GFL) converters, built on the assumption that inertial sources regulate the system stability. Such an assumption does not hold for the low-inertia grids of the future. Grid-forming (GFM) converters, which mimic the traditional synchronous machinery’s functionalities, have been identified as a potential solution to support the low-inertia grids. The performance analysis of GFM converters for small-signal instability can be found in the literature, but large-signal instability is still an open research question. Moreover, various topologies and configurations of GFM converters have been proposed. Still, no comparative study combining all GFC configurations from the perspective of large-signal stability issues can be found. This paper combines and compares all the existing GFM control schemes from the perspective of large-signal stability issues to pave the way for future research and development of GFM converters for large-signal stability analysis and stabilization of the future low-inertia grids. 

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5. Future-Proofing Energy Infrastructure: Power Grid Risk Assessment

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69626-8_94  

   Qudaisat, Muneer; Houssou, Dela; Gallus, William; Alipour, Alice (January 2025, Springer Nature Switzerland)

   Abstract Climate-change-imposed challenges in the form of heightened frequency and intensity of weather events exert additional pressure on securing the imperative continuous and reliable power supply, leading to increased power outages. This research proposes a comprehensive framework for enhancing the resilience of electric power networks (EPNs) through reliability-based risk assessment, promoting predictions and proactive decisions. The presented research discusses weather phenomena, their association with climate change, and their projected impacts. The numerical weather prediction model, WRF 3.4.1, with a 4 km resolution cell grid, gives a more accurate projection of high winds’ frequency and intensity. The simulation period from 2086 to 2099 is based on a reference control period spanning from 2000 to 2013, with adjustments made to background conditions using climate model output consistent with projections for the late century, a pseudo-global warming (PGW) technique. The presented research focuses on the wooden power distribution poles. The reliability assessment approach employs fragility development and analysis against wind scenarios through advanced modeling techniques and statistical analysis used to mimic historical and projected wind scenarios and to allow numerous factors on both the demand and capacity sides and their inherent uncertainties to be considered. The annual probability of failure is obtained by performing a mathematical convolution of the fragility and the hazard curves, showing the reflection of the effects of climate change on the annual probability of failure. Scaling these results to a system-level resilience assessment will facilitate the flexible energy design strategies integration and allow smoother net-zero standards incorporation and adaptation to the changing environmental conditions. This understanding will allow the decision-makers to evaluate the critical locations within a distribution line and plan to address the vulnerabilities by hardening the assets or implementing modern microgrid techniques or distributed energy resource integration. 

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