Community power outage prediction modeling for the Eastern United States

In the United States, weather-related power outages cost the economy tens of billions annually, and there has been an upward trend in billion-dollar disasters over the last two decades. Thus, it is of growing importance to be able to predict outages and understand local resilience. However, many out...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: William O. Taylor, Diego Cerrai, David Wanik, Marika Koukoula, Emmanouil N. Anagnostou
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2023-11-01
Series:Energy Reports
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484723015093
_version_ 1797378671242117120
author William O. Taylor
Diego Cerrai
David Wanik
Marika Koukoula
Emmanouil N. Anagnostou
author_facet William O. Taylor
Diego Cerrai
David Wanik
Marika Koukoula
Emmanouil N. Anagnostou
author_sort William O. Taylor
collection DOAJ
description In the United States, weather-related power outages cost the economy tens of billions annually, and there has been an upward trend in billion-dollar disasters over the last two decades. Thus, it is of growing importance to be able to predict outages and understand local resilience. However, many outage prediction models rely on utility infrastructure and outage data, which can be difficult to obtain when a study domain covers many utility territories. This study demonstrates two gradient-boosting machine-learning models driven by utility-agnostic non-proprietary data, eliminating the need for utility-specific data, and allowing individuals or communities to build and use such models for emergency planning or vulnerability analysis. Further, the framework is novel for its ability to incorporate data from various ecoregions, utilize infrastructure proxy data, and provide outage predictions for a breadth of storm types over a large and scalable domain. In this study, vegetation, land cover, energy infrastructure proxy, and weather data are used as model inputs to evaluate 15,872 events across 17 states in the Eastern U.S., where an event is defined as a unique combination of geographic county and storm episode ID. The model predicting all storm types except thunderstorms was validated using 10-fold cross-validation where folds were split chronologically, and demonstrates an r-squared value between predicted and actual outages of 0.61. Similarly, the thunderstorm-only model demonstrates an r-squared of 0.31. For future work, the addition of flooding data may be considered as the r-squared for the various-storm-type model increases to 0.77 when data from New York and New Jersey for Hurricane Sandy are removed. Additionally, the framework demonstrated here can be used to create a real-time outage prediction forecasting tool for storm events, and can be used to analyze resilience at a county resolution under future climate scenarios.
first_indexed 2024-03-08T20:09:59Z
format Article
id doaj.art-4d8df144a8284a54bf2fa87aa80a6959
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2352-4847
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-08T20:09:59Z
publishDate 2023-11-01
publisher Elsevier
record_format Article
series Energy Reports
spelling doaj.art-4d8df144a8284a54bf2fa87aa80a69592023-12-23T05:22:05ZengElsevierEnergy Reports2352-48472023-11-011041484169Community power outage prediction modeling for the Eastern United StatesWilliam O. Taylor0Diego Cerrai1David Wanik2Marika Koukoula3Emmanouil N. Anagnostou4Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, CT, USA; Eversource Energy Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, CT, USA; Corresponding author at: Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, CT, USA.Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, CT, USA; Eversource Energy Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, CT, USADepartment of Operations & Information Management, University of Connecticut, Stamford, 06901, CT, USADepartment of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, CT, USA; Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, SwitzerlandDepartment of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, CT, USA; Eversource Energy Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, CT, USAIn the United States, weather-related power outages cost the economy tens of billions annually, and there has been an upward trend in billion-dollar disasters over the last two decades. Thus, it is of growing importance to be able to predict outages and understand local resilience. However, many outage prediction models rely on utility infrastructure and outage data, which can be difficult to obtain when a study domain covers many utility territories. This study demonstrates two gradient-boosting machine-learning models driven by utility-agnostic non-proprietary data, eliminating the need for utility-specific data, and allowing individuals or communities to build and use such models for emergency planning or vulnerability analysis. Further, the framework is novel for its ability to incorporate data from various ecoregions, utilize infrastructure proxy data, and provide outage predictions for a breadth of storm types over a large and scalable domain. In this study, vegetation, land cover, energy infrastructure proxy, and weather data are used as model inputs to evaluate 15,872 events across 17 states in the Eastern U.S., where an event is defined as a unique combination of geographic county and storm episode ID. The model predicting all storm types except thunderstorms was validated using 10-fold cross-validation where folds were split chronologically, and demonstrates an r-squared value between predicted and actual outages of 0.61. Similarly, the thunderstorm-only model demonstrates an r-squared of 0.31. For future work, the addition of flooding data may be considered as the r-squared for the various-storm-type model increases to 0.77 when data from New York and New Jersey for Hurricane Sandy are removed. Additionally, the framework demonstrated here can be used to create a real-time outage prediction forecasting tool for storm events, and can be used to analyze resilience at a county resolution under future climate scenarios.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484723015093Power outagesModelingElectric gridStormsProxy dataCommunity
spellingShingle William O. Taylor
Diego Cerrai
David Wanik
Marika Koukoula
Emmanouil N. Anagnostou
Community power outage prediction modeling for the Eastern United States
Energy Reports
Power outages
Modeling
Electric grid
Storms
Proxy data
Community
title Community power outage prediction modeling for the Eastern United States
title_full Community power outage prediction modeling for the Eastern United States
title_fullStr Community power outage prediction modeling for the Eastern United States
title_full_unstemmed Community power outage prediction modeling for the Eastern United States
title_short Community power outage prediction modeling for the Eastern United States
title_sort community power outage prediction modeling for the eastern united states
topic Power outages
Modeling
Electric grid
Storms
Proxy data
Community
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484723015093
work_keys_str_mv AT williamotaylor communitypoweroutagepredictionmodelingfortheeasternunitedstates
AT diegocerrai communitypoweroutagepredictionmodelingfortheeasternunitedstates
AT davidwanik communitypoweroutagepredictionmodelingfortheeasternunitedstates
AT marikakoukoula communitypoweroutagepredictionmodelingfortheeasternunitedstates
AT emmanouilnanagnostou communitypoweroutagepredictionmodelingfortheeasternunitedstates