Real-time assemsments of wind related damage to electricity infrastructure Societal Theme Sustainability

Dealing with the consequences of weather related phenomena is an age-old problem. We have made great advances in predicting the weather, but we have made little progress in turning the outputs of these forecasts into actionable information that can help us manage their consequences. The winter storms of 2013/14 and 2014/15 demonstrated that our electrical distribution networks are not only vulnerable to strong winds, but their failure severely impacts on communities. This project will develop and test a new form of weather forecasting, which we term "consequence forecasts". These forecasts are essentially the same as traditional weather forecasts, however, they give a probabilistic assessment of the likely impacts and consequences of weather rather than just predicting the intensity of a weather variable. In this research will make forecasts of the number and location of electricity faults, provided via heat maps, and the number of customers without power.

Keywords:
wind storm, resilience, electricity infrastructure, natural hazard, consequence forecasts, weather forecasts

Stakeholders:
Western Power Distribution, National Grid, Energy Networks Association, Met Office, Electricity Consumers

Western Power Distribution (WPD) - A decision making tool which can give more accurate and probabilistic estimates of the number and locations of faults, and also consumers without power, thus enabling them to make a more informed decision regarding the mobilisation and placement of resources prior to the event. This will result in quicker repair times for damaged components and therefore shorter consumer interruptions to electricity. One of the outputs of the Parliamentary Select Committee into the Christmas 2013 power disruption, held on the 21st January 2014, was to raise the amount of compensation payable to consumers following power outages as a result of severe weather conditions (to £35 for each 12 hour period, with a maximum of £300 per customer) and also to reduce the time a consumer is without power before compensation should be made (from 24 or 48 hours, depending on the severity of the event, to 18 or 36 hours). Therefore, the value of reducing consumer interruptions to electrical supply is not only directly beneficial to the consumer, but also financially to the network operator. This is particularly evident when considering that a total of 133,790 WPD consumers were without power in the 2013/14 event. District network operators also received a large amount of negative media attention during the 2013/14 and 2014/15 events which had a severe detrimental impact to their reputation. This forecast tool will help to reduce this negative attention and impact, by ensuring that losses to consumer supplies are minimised.

National Grid (NG) - As NG experience fewer faults and repair times are quicker, fault location is of primary importance. For example, a failed line over a motorway is of far greater concern than in a rural area. We will therefore develop a risk matrix for their assets that can be used to produce heat maps where risk is greatest.

Energy Networks Association (ENA) - An assessment of the skill of the tool at predicting windstorm induced impacts to electricity distribution networks, which will be disseminated to their members (i.e. other district network operators). This will also help to achieve their goal of providing the safest, most reliable, most efficient and sustainable networks in the world and keep UK at the forefront of energy supply development.