Spatiotemporal Impact Analysis of Hurricanes and Storm Surges on Power Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents a probabilistic framework to assess the combined impact of hurricanes and storm surges on power systems, using synthetic hurricane data and a Texas power grid model to quantify load losses.

Contribution

It introduces a novel spatiotemporal impact assessment method that accounts for storm surge effects on power grid reliability during hurricanes.

Findings

Storm surges increase load losses during hurricanes.

Inundation of substations significantly impacts grid resilience.

The framework enables detailed risk analysis of hurricane impacts.

Abstract

This paper develops a spatiotemporal probabilistic impact assessment framework to analyze and quantify the compounding effect of hurricanes and storm surges on the bulk power grid. The probabilistic synthetic hurricane tracks are generated using historical hurricane data, and storm surge scenarios are generated based on observed hurricane parameters. The system losses are modeled using a loss metric that quantifies the total load loss. The overall simulation is performed on the synthetic Texas 2000-bus system mapped on the geographical footprint of Texas. The results show that power substation inundation due to storm surge creates additional load losses as the hurricane traverses inland.