Ever-ready energy: new technologies are keeping the lights on when disasters strike the electrical grid.

• Author: Shea, Dan
• Position: ENERGY - Cover story

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When Superstorm Sandy knocked out power to nearly 8 million people across 15 Eastern states, many expected it would be out for quite a while. It took two full days to light up Manhattan's skyscrapers and reopen the New York Stock Exchange. For many others, it took nearly two weeks.

Princeton University, however, was able to restore power in just 20 minutes because of its microgrid, which generates its own electricity and can run independently of the grid.

"The grid will fail. It's just the nature of things," says Ted Borer, Princeton's energy plant manager. "It's more a question of when is it going to break, and how well are we going to be prepared for that."

Microgrids are just one example of how state legislators are seeking to make the electrical grid more reliable and resilient through strategies that strengthen infrastructure and shorten the time it takes to restore power.

The whole idea is to minimize the damage and disruption of a disaster. To make a superstorm feel more like a thunderstorm.

Economies of Hail

Superstorm Sandy was only a Category 1 hurricane when it made landfall in 2012. But, because of its sheer size, it caused $70 billion in damages. Only Hurricane Katrina has been costlier, at $108 billion. The economic toll from disasters is so heavy in part because power outages disrupt commerce and are expensive to restore.

Data from the U.S. Department of Energy show that weather-related blackouts in the U.S. doubled between 2003 and 2012, at an average annual cost of $18 billion to $33 billion. The National Hurricane Center reveals that, after adjusting for inflation, 12 of the 30 most damaging hurricanes since 1900 have hit in the last 15 years.

"We had Irene. We had Sandy. We had a snowstorm that went on forever. We had people in the dark, substations threatened by flooding and power out for eight, 10, 12 days," says Connecticut Representative Lonnie Reed (D). "We began to see just how vulnerable the whole interconnected system is."

It may be impossible to completely neutralize the damage wrought by nature, but lawmakers in several states are trying to soften the impact. States along the Atlantic seaboard, hit hard by a series of destructive storms in recent years, are working to rein force and protect their critical infrastructure.

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New Jersey legislators have introduced more than two dozen bills in 2016 to address disaster preparedness. Many are carryovers from the previous session, in which only three became law and two others were vetoed. The various bills include proposals to move electric distribution lines underground, require utilities to file emergency response and flood mitigation plans, and facilitate municipal investments in flood and hurricane resistance projects.

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Similar efforts are underway across the country. A newly enacted law in New York requires residential health care facilities to undergo energy and disaster preparedness reviews. A bill pending in Oregon would require local governments to plan for tsunami resilience.

Other state legislators have proposed bills to direct state agencies to assess the grid's vulnerabilities and create comprehensive plans to strengthen electric systems. But it can be hard to put a price on damage that is prevented, making plans with high up-front costs like infrastructure upgrades and onsite power generation, hard to justify. Legislation requiring comprehensive planning was introduced in six states last year but passed in only New York and Puerto Rico.

A growing number of businesses and...