Hardening Puerto Rico - Transforming Our Grid

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg talks with Shay Bahramirad who is the  vice president of T&D, strategy, and sustainability at LUMA and president of the IEEE Power & Engineering Society. The discussion focuses on rebuilding the grid in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and how the world is pivoting to a new electric grid.

Bahramirad is the point person helping to rebuild the grid in Puerto Rico and and go beyond what existed prior to Hurricane Maria. The federal government has earmarked $16 billion to Puerto Rico for grid related work.

“From that total $16 billion dollars, we have initiated over $13 billion dollars of scope of work and over $4 billion dollars of it is approved by FEMA and over $1.2 billion dollars has been constructed in the grid. That includes everything from poles that they would withstand 160 miles per hour winds to modernization of substations,” said Bahramirad. 

Part of the rebuild is making the grid more reliable for customers.

“It also suffered from decades of under investments and lack of maintenance that led customers and citizens of Puerto Rico to experience outages three times more frequently than any other utility in the United States. “

“We got to work. The frequency of outages experienced by customers has gone down by about 25% since we started.”

As for changes confronting IEEE Power & Engineering Society members, utilities, and customers – the organization is focused on building the electrical grid of the future and making sure all the players are working in unison.

“It’s an unprecedented time to be in this industry and the challenges that we deal with cannot wait for a decade to coordinate.”

Dr. Bahramirad is a leading figure in the industry. She is the President of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, an editorial board member of the Electricity Journal, a US CIGRE Executive member, an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the founder of IEEE Women in Power. Dr. Bahramirad completed her PhD in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.