NC Storm-based Outage Prediction

Severe weather-based power outages are among the most widespread issues facing electric power utilities. In North Carolina, short-duration power outages from severe weather, such as winter ice storms and summer thunderstorms, regularly lead to tens of thousands of customer outage minutes annually. A significant challenge in mitigating the impact of severe weather outages is due to the unpredictability of severe weather and the associated grid impacts. The inability to forecast storm damages leads to slower reaction times – there is inherently less time to develop necessary staffing plans, like prepositioning repair crews and supplies, which can lead to more prolonged restoration times for customers. We aim to develop a predictive analytics tool to forecast storm-based outages in advance of weather phenomena to aid in making staffing and supply decisions.