A widespread power outage rippled through Spain, Portugal and parts of France on Monday. Trains stopped in their tracks, passengers evacuated underground metros in the dark, traffic lights went black and airports, including Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon, lost power delaying flights and stirring travel chaos.
On Tuesday, officials from Pittsburgh International Airport, Duquesne Light Company and Liberty Energy gathered about a mile from the airport’s main terminal to show why travelers at PIT don’t have to worry about the lights going out from a rare atmospheric phenomenon, or a fire at a nearby electrical substation like the one that caused the power outage that shut down London Heathrow Airport last month.
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“We will never have that problem,” said Christina Cassotis, CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority.
Since 2021, PIT has its own microgrid, powered by natural gas and solar produced on-site. It was the first airport in the world to do so.
And the amount of solar power produced on-site will soon be amped up. PIT’s solar field is adding 11,216 panels to the 10,000 already perched on top of a former landfill, airport and utility officials announced Tuesday. This can generate an additional 4.7 megawatts of power to the region’s electrical grid and is set to be completed by 2027.
“A significant amount of power [is] coming out of this,” said Mike Brady, vice president of power generation at Liberty Energy. “I was skeptical when we built it. Pennsylvania has a lot of cloudy days, but it exceeded my expectations for the amount of power we’ve been able to deliver.”
Pittsburgh doesn’t have a sunny reputation, but it’s similar to many cities in the eastern U.S., such as Boston and Philadelphia, in terms of its solar potential from global horizontal irradiance (GHI), which measures all the solar radiation — direct, diffuse, reflected — that a solar panel could receive, according to data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
The airport’s solar array pairs with five natural gas generators to push out 23 megawatts of power and has saved the airport about $1 million a year in utility costs. It has cut carbon emissions by more than six million pounds each year, according to the Allegheny County Airport Authority.
The airport’s microgrid is connected to the region’s electrical grid. If there’s a problem, the airport can still get electricity without delays. The airport’s current peak demand is only about 14 megawatts, and any excess power is sold back to the main electrical grid through an agreement between Cordia, the microgrid’s owner, and PJM, the grid operator for the region.
Power outages at airports aren’t uncommon and can impact everything from air traffic control to ticketing. Airports have backup generators, but getting back up and running at full power can take several hours, causing delays and cancellations. Two dozen airports in the U.S. reported a total of 321 electrical outages that lasted for at least five minutes from 2015 to 2022, according to a Government Accountability Office report from 2023.
The solar field expansion “actually strengthens our microgrid,” Cassotis said. “It strengthens our commitment to energy independence and energy diversity here at the airport. And it’s important to do that because we are national critical transportation infrastructure. We need to work.”
