Changes of Electric Distribution Network Storm Outages in Future Climate Scenarios: Evaluation for a Service Territory in Northeastern United States

The resilience of electric power system is critical to economic prosperity, as well as public health and safety. In the Northeastern United States, where severe weather events occur throughout the year, it is important to quantify the weather-induced power outages and understand the impact of climate change on power system resilience in the future. This study focuses on assessing the future resilience of the power grid for a service territory in the Northeastern United States, by developing a holistic framework that employs high-resolution climate data along with the power outage prediction models (OPMs). The OPMs are a group of machine-learning based models designed to predict the amount of power outages for different types of weather events. The climate data used in this study are based on selected General Circulation Model (GCM) products that follow two Representative Concentration Pathways (namely RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5), which are statistically bias-corrected over an 18-km grid. The climate data are, then, used to identify and classify the possible weather-related outage events and quantify associated number of power outages by OPMs. The results aim to, i) quantify the severity and frequency of the occurrence of weather-induced power outages in the next 40 years (2020-2060); and ii) provide a basis for a comparison of the difference of power outages under the two RCP scenarios and the current climate conditions. This information can be useful for making decisions on power grid strengthening plans that accommodate potential future climate change impacts on the power grid resilience.