Grid resilience isn’t a new concept, but the way utilities achieve it is changing dramatically. Traditionally, hardening the grid meant building bigger physical infrastructure. But as Switched Source CEO Charles Murray has outlined, meeting upcoming grid demands cost-effectively requires utilities to think differently and embrace new capabilities.
Heavy capital hardware upgrades are no longer a standalone fix. Today, grid resilience is all about operational agility and dynamic power-flow control to keep the power on. But what does doing so mean on a practical level? What happens when high-level operational intelligence is paired with real-time grid automation? How should utilities newly think about their resilience strategy? On the latest episode of the Factor This Podcast, we caught up with Murray to get answers to these questions and much more.
Listen to the audio-only version of the episode:
The Limits of Traditional Hardening
For decades now, utilities have relied on the expansion and build-out of physical infrastructure as their primary means of enabling resilience and reliably delivering power. But as load growth accelerates and extreme weather events become more frequent, depending solely on heavy buildouts or approaches undergrounding has proven to be limited, costly, or impractical. Or all three.
“Undergrounding everything is incredibly expensive,” Murray said. “A lot of it can be dependent on something specific soil conditions, and the processes will be different depending on the utility. But it all comes back to the fable of the oak tree and the reed: do you want something flexible, or do you want to build something incredibly strong? There’s a balancing act there, and affordability is a huge part of the equation.”
System-wide undergrounding or large-scale reconductoring carries a massive price tag. Installing rigid, 40-year assets to solve immediate, localized constraints risks “gold-plating” the system or overbuilding capacity where it won’t be needed in the long term. With the rapid expansion of EV charging hubs, industrial electrification, and energy demand driven by data centers, traditional distribution planning that relies solely on hardware buildouts is borderline impractical. It’s why utilities and their partners are switching to a more dynamic approach that is designed to maximize existing grid capacity today to unlock expandable capacity for tomorrow.
Tapping Underutilized Grid Capacity
Analogies about the peak-demand capacity problem have been well detailed, but as extreme stress events become more frequent, worst-case scenarios are growing increasingly severe. This escalating pressure is forcing a push for expanded capacity during peak hours. However, rather than treating distribution limits as rigid constraints that only traditional reconductoring can fix, modern operators are looking closely at how power actually moves across existing infrastructure.
“There’s a tremendous amount of capacity in the grid that we’re simply not using,” Murray told Factor This. “The power electronics that serve as the front end for energy storage systems can actually be deployed on their own. That allows us to tap into that underutilized capacity and get the exact same power-flow benefits—without the added cost or complexity of the battery itself.”
A primary culprit behind this lost capacity is phase load imbalance, with 20% to 50% of distribution circuits operating outside established design parameters. When single-phase loads draw uneven power across three-phase backbones, neutral currents rise, voltage profiles degrade, and overall circuit throughput is artificially choked off. By deploying fast-acting power electronics and dynamic power-flow controllers directly on distribution circuits, utilities can automatically rebalance phase loading and route power dynamically. Doing so unlocks latent capacity that’s already been built into existing wires without requiring costly physical rebuilds or battery hardware.
It’s a great example of what it means to solve an established problem with a new way of thinking that can be a baseline for even greater efficiencies with AI-driven automation capabilities and predictive software tools. As ever, the approach and integration of these new tools is essential.
Passive Automation over Operational Friction
As we’ve explored from various perspectives, the key barrier to adopting new distribution technology is operational complexity. Control room operators and grid planners manage hundreds or even thousands of circuits simultaneously. If a new hardware device or software platform requires constant manual tuning or complex scenario analysis during a crisis, adoption stalls. For new technology to earn a permanent spot in the control room, seamless automation and passive performance are non-negotiable.
“When we walk into a utility and offer these tools, they sometimes underestimate how prevalent imbalances and congestion are across their system,” Murray said. “We’re not showing up to tell a utility they’ve done a bad job. They’ve been operating within the capital constraints they were given—they simply haven’t had access to this type of tool.”
True operational solutions prioritize passive automation that automatically adapt to real-time grid conditions without burdening dispatchers or field crews. During post-storm restoration, automated phase-balancing keeps circuits stable even in non-optimal configurations, allowing line workers to restore power safely without manually re-tapping phase laterals under emergency conditions.
All of it goes back to a concept that Murray highlighted around how modernizing grid resilience isn’t an either/or choice between steel in the ground and software in the cloud. Maintaining reliability and affordability means that utility executives and grid planners need to expand their traditional toolkit to embrace predictive software and flexible controls. The most effective grid investment portfolios have a balanced solution set: fixed assets, flexible assets and better, easier controls for operators. How that portfolio looks will differ for every utility.
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Renewableenergyworld.com
