Understanding compound weather and climate risks facing electricity networks

Electricity networks are an important component of critical national infrastructure. Their failure, leading to power outages, can cascade through other infrastructure networks and compromise the function of other critical services. Electricity networks are facing a massive transformation to handle the increased demands placed on them by net zero commitments. Alongside this, future increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather will test electricity infrastructure that is already perceived to have insufficient resilience. Transforming networks as part of the net zero transition presents an opportunity to increase their resilience: this requires an understanding of the causes of network failures, the challenges that utility operators face in managing infrastructure risks, and the quantification of weather driven risks.

In this presentation, we present results from two projects. The first project used interviews and round-table discussions with energy industry experts in the UK to understand their needs from climate science as well as to uncover what they consider to be the largest weather and climate risks, the operational difficulties these present to electricity networks and what they believe to be low-regret options for enhancing climate resilience. The second project used statistical analysis to predict damage to electricity infrastructure from key weather hazards (windstorms, heat waves) and assessed how electricity infrastructure risks may change in the future using high-resolution 2.2 km climate simulations.

We discuss the main outcomes, strengths and limitations of both approaches and conclude that 1) expert elicitation provides a detailed and nuanced understanding of the range and severity of societal consequences produced by extreme weather and various compounding factors, and 2) probabilistic impact models that do not include multi-hazard and compounding effects underestimate the potential damages of extreme weather to electricity infrastructure – specifically the effects of wind direction, soil moisture and leaf cover during windstorms.