Story Map: Projected changes in hurricane-induced power outages in a future climate

Hurricanes, or more generally tropical cyclones, are known to cause extensive damage to electric power system infrastructure, as high winds and heavy precipitation often leave felled trees and downed power lines in their aftermath. This can result in long-duration power outages following a storm, as utility crews work to repair damaged poles and lines as quickly as possible. There is a growing body of research focused on how climate change will affect future storm characteristics in terms of frequency, intensity, and location. While studying the change in hurricane behavior itself is the first step, the motivation for this case study lies in gaining a better and more nuanced understanding of what a change in storm characteristics might mean for power system impacts. Namely, how might climate change affect the risk of hurricane-induced power outages?

As an initial demonstration resulting from a collaboration between EPRI and PNNL, we’ve coupled synthetic storm tracks, created under both current and future climate conditions, with a prediction of power outages resulting from each storm to characterize broad trends at the county scale across U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coast states. Explore the linked story map to see how outage events – looking at different measures of frequency and magnitude – are projected to change in a future climate. Each layer offers a different picture of risk and can be used to conceptualize a community’s lived experience, inform a utility company’s planning decisions, or bound expectations for increasing risk. This map provides a way to dive into these results at the county level, showing several different metrics of interest:

• The number of hurricanes (i.e., exposure to hurricane-force winds) occurring per decade, with a map layer showing simulated values for the current climate, the projected values for the future climate, and the change between the two
• The number of outage events experienced per person per decade, with a map layer showing simulated values for the current climate, the projected values for the future climate, and the change between the two
• The number of severe outage events per decade (here defined as events with at least 50% of the county population without power), with a map layer showing simulated values for the current climate, the projected values for the future climate, and the change between the two
• The 20-year return period outage magnitude (here defined as the percentage of population without power), with a map layer showing simulated values for the current climate, the projected values for the future climate, and the change between the two

To access the story map click here: Climate READi (epri.com)