September and October may go down as the "Autumn of Flickering Lights" across large swaths of California as the utility Pacific Gas & Electric cuts electric power to thousands of customers as blustery winds sweep across the state and increase fire danger.

The utility has acknowledged that its equipment played a role in the 2018 Camp Fire, which burned a total of 153,336 acres, destroyed 18,804 structures and resulted in 85 civilian fatalities and several firefighter injuries. Faced with potential liabilities of as much as $30 billion from that and earlier fires, PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection earlier in 2019.

It also adopted a policy of proactively shutting off power in areas where high winds and dry vegetation could combine to spark wildfires if energized utility equipment fails or comes into contact with dry fuel.

In late September, the utility cut off power to around 48,000 customers as weather conditions deteriorated to the point that shutdown protocols were triggered. PG&E cut power again in early October, this time affecting fewer than 11,000 customers. An even larger disruption was announced on October 8 when the utility said that it would implement a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) in portions of 34 northern, central and coastal counties, affecting nearly 800,000 customers.

Satellite view of the Camp Fire in northern California. The utility warned that power could be off for days, first as the weather event blew through and then as crews inspected and, if needed, repaired damaged power lines and equipment.

In dramatic fashion, the combination of catastrophic wildfires and proactive service disruptions affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of customers have come to shine a spotlight on the electric power grid's vulnerability.

It's too early to declare the demise of the interconnected grid and its web of long-haul transmission lines and large-scale centralized power generating stations. But a case is growing for accelerating investments in small-scale generating units that are close to load centers and that operate within microgrids that can isolate themselves in advance of natural and manmade disasters.

Showcase technologies for such widely distributed power generation include rooftop solar, whose rapid deployment is making non-utility players, such as retailer Wal-Mart, a leading producer of solar energy. The advance of electric vehicles has proven to be a boon for large battery energy storage devices that are being deployed in an wide range of settings. Arizona Public Service plans to use battery storage in rural parts of its service territory rather than make expensive investment in transmission upgrades. When paired with solar power, such storage systems can greatly extend the amount of time that renewable energy can meet peak demand.

Natural disasters are helping to make a case for microgrids and distributed power generating resources.Another technology that may benefit from disruptions to the traditional grid is small modular reactor (SMR) designs such as NuScale, which promise to use factory-built, standardized and modular construction to bring small-scale nuclear power to small loads that could include college campuses, medical facilities and critical government facilities. The trick will be to ensure that SMRs truly are standardized and capable of being both rapidly deployed and easily expanded.

A key drawback of central station nuclear power today is the hybrid nature of a large portion of the fleet. Little standardization exists. That, along with enormously complex engineering, means that cost overruns and construction delays blunt the multiple environmental benefits that new large-scale nuclear energy can provide.

There is no little irony in the fact that large portions of California — with its high-tech swagger that is the envy of the world — faces a future that includes the prospect of enduring days at a stretch without power whenever the wind blows too hard. To its credit, the state has shown real leadership in encouraging distributed generation and bolstering energy storage, particularly after the Aliso Canyon accident.

At the federal level, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) acted in 2018 to remove what it said were barriers to the participation of electric storage resources in the capacity, energy and ancillary services markets operated by Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators. In a November 2016 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR), the Obama-era commission said that market rules designed for traditional generation resources can create barriers to entry for emerging technologies such as electric storage resources.

As the grid's vulnerabilities increasingly become exposed by large-scale disasters (and even by the forecast of a Winnie-the-Pooh-type blustery day), more work needs to be done to bolster the grid where appropriate and also to make investments in distributed and storage technology that will keep the lights — and perhaps even the economy — from flickering.