A resilient city needs to have strong infrastructure, in addition to a strong economy, easy residential lifestyle, and natural parks. Specifically, a strong power grid could enhance a city’s infrastructure, making it more resilient. In order to do this, an ideal city should get assistance from electrical engineers. Power grids usually take the most damage during natural disasters from tornadoes, lightning, hurricanes, so electrical engineers would help in problems like this. These highly-skilled engineers are able to prevent anything disastrous happening to the power grid by using more renewable energy. Also, electrical engineers have the skill to evaluate and test the grid to problem-solve from failures. Damaged power grids or power outages leaves people without electricity and necessary tools to protect themselves. Resilient power grids or fast-recovery power grids would help make the economy better and the communities would feel more secure. One way to improve the strength of the power grids is by burying power lines below the ground.
By burying power lines, many cities can make their use of power more efficient. Natural disasters are the most common cause of blackouts. However, if cities bury the power lines, the lines are out of harm’s way. Even though burying power lines costs an extreme amount of money (around four to ten times more than regular), the outcome is significant. According to the internet, burying power lines reduces outages by about 70 percent in communities which is a huge positive X-factor. Also, burying power lines keeps it away from wind storms like blizzards, which are supposed to occur more often in the future. Engineers could also make other improvements to enhance their power grids.
Building more diversity, adding renewable resources for power grids would make it very resilient in an effective manner. Adding more clean, renewable energy sources to the power grid could help spread power generation throughout the morning and night evenly, especially during peak hours. Also, if a single power plant went out, the effect would be minimal. Renewable energy has the ability to increase energy resiliency by keeping the lights on which is one example, including at critical facilities in the wake of a natural disaster. By creating microgrids for each specific building, each building could generate their own power. Finally, another way to design a resilient power grid is to invest in smart-grid technology.
In the future, technology will be much more advanced, so it should be possible to make an efficient smart grid. The smart grid technologies can interact with customer devices in a socialized environment, so that the customers’ electricity can be better managed while improving the power grid reliability. Regular homes would not make the power grid more resilient, so some solutions include battery storage, internet-addressable thermostats and appliances, and a range of energy-efficient building thermal design features such as thermal insulation, and efficient windows. Also, smart-grid technology would allow electricity to be returned to homes quicker after outages caused by natural disasters and the key to that is MicroGrid Technology. MicroGrid Technology will be a great future investment in helping the grid become more resilient. A power grid is an iconic tool for the future, so it needs to be resilient to recover quickly from natural disasters. First, it would be sufficient to bury the power lines so it would not be exposed to the deadly natural disasters. Next, the power grid would be effective if more diversity will be built for the power grid. It would increase energy resiliency and be more efficient with using renewable energy. Finally, it would be unique to build a smart-power grid. Technology is all around and it will only increase in the future. The smart, power grid technology will let electricity flow to the house quicker after outages caused by natural disasters making the grid more resilient to withstand natural disasters. There are many ways to make a power grid more resilient, but the pillars which are listed will make the power grid the most resilient out of them all.
For our 2018-2019 Future Cities project, I think the location of our resilient city should be Dubai. Dubai is a great location for a resilient city because it is known for its economic success. Currently, Dubai is working on measures to enhance and improve the systems it has put in place in order to maintain infrastructural strength. I think that a perfect name for our city is Almuruna. Almuruna means resiliency in Arabic which is very unique in its own way. The name also fits Dubai’s culture as it is part of the United Arab Emirates.
