Power Outage Prediction using Hurricane Forecast

Hurricanes are natural weather events that cause recurring and prolonged power outages in the U.S. This paper shows how ensemble weather forecast can be utilized to estimate the extent of temporal and spatial damages that a hurricane can inflict on the power system infrastructure. The line outage estimations, from ensemble members, can be used to compute optimal preventive scheduling for generators, for the duration of the event. The various schedules, can then, be used as alternative plans to choose from, depending on the actual path and wind force of the hurricane, closer to the event. Ensemble forecast for Hurricane Harvey, in the leading days to the landfall, is used to assess the impacts on the 2000 bus synthetic grid (ACTIVSg2000) on the footprint of Texas.