The Office of Regulatory Staff (ORS) released the final report on the Resiliency of South Carolina’s Electric and Natural Gas Infrastructure Against Extreme Winter Storm Events.
Following the February 2021 winter storm that left vast parts of Texas without power and running water, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster called for a comprehensive review of South Carolina’s public and private power grid.
The resulting final report indicates that, given the information provided by 65 participating utility providers, South Carolina’s energy system and utility providers are adequately prepared to prevent and respond to outages caused by ice storms and other winter weather events. An insufficient level of information was provided to conduct a full resiliency assessment for the small natural gas utilities.
“This is an important and encouraging step towards fully understanding the stability and resiliency of the state’s power grid,” said Governor Henry McMaster. “This is an ever-evolving work in progress and we must remain vigilant, but to know that our utilities have the systems in place to quickly respond to severe winter weather events should be welcome news to South Carolinians.”
“We greatly appreciate the participating utilities’ cooperation to help us determine the resiliency of our state’s energy infrastructure in the event of extreme winter weather,” said Nanette Edwards, Executive Director of the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff. “South Carolina has a diversity of generation sources necessary to meet high winter demands, and our state’s utility providers are prepared to adequately respond to winter weather events.”
Potential Threats to Safe and Reliable Utility Service
