Critical Risk Indicators (CRIs) for the electric power grid: a survey and discussion of interconnected effects

Abstract

The electric power grid is a critical societal resource connecting multiple infrastructural domains such as agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing. The electrical grid as an infrastructure is shaped by human activity and public policy in terms of demand and supply requirements. Further, the grid is subject to changes and stresses due to diverse factors including solar weather, climate, hydrology, and ecology. The emerging interconnected and complex network dependencies make such interactions increasingly dynamic, posing novel risks, and presenting new challenges to manage the coupled human-natural system. This paper provides a survey of models and methods that seek to explore the significant interconnected impact of the electric power grid and interdependent domains. We also provide relevant critical risk indicators (CRIs) across diverse domains that may be used to assess risks to electric grid reliability, including climate, ecology, hydrology, finance, space weather, and agriculture. We discuss the convergence of indicators from individual domains to explore possible systemic risk, i.e., holistic risk arising from cross-domain interconnections. Further, we propose a compositional approach to risk assessment that incorporates diverse domain expertise and information, data science, and computer science to identify domain-specific CRIs and their union in systemic risk indicators. Our study provides an important first step towards datadriven analysis and predictive modeling of risks in interconnected human-natural systems.

GIS-Based Planning and Web/3D Web GIS Applications for the Analysis and Management of MV/LV Electrical Networks (A Case Study in Tunisia)

“…Urban sprawl was considered, for example, for electrical consumption in the Spanish case in the study of Lasarte et al in 2018 [51]. Agricultural activities could also be an important human factor, as many of them are connected to the electricity grid as providing irrigation and livestock water, as it was clarified in the study of Che-Castaldo et al in 2021 [52].…”

Mapping Disruption Sources in the Power Grid and Implications for Resilience

“…3) System as a Whole: Authors in [27] analyze critical risk indicators across different human and natural networks that comprise the power grid as a critical societal resource, finding that electric grid resilience cannot be defined in a closed system. Reference [28] uses a multi-hazard approach to develop a two-stage hybrid risk estimation model to characterize key predictors of severe weather-induced power outages.…”

“…Despite broadening power grid resilience to include systems thinking, interconnections and socioeconomic factors, and siting the importance of not focusing on singular scenarios or time frames, resilience metrics and quantification are not analyzed directly and are not tied to disruption propagation in the overall system [27], [28]. In the last study, although the authors analyze trends in disruption timelines, the findings oversimplify disruption occurrences to power grid resilience, and make it difficult to apply resilience strategies [29].…”

Bayesian Optimization and Hierarchical Forecasting of Non-Weather-Related Electric Power Outages

“…Power outages demonstrate a failure in the proper functioning of an electrical distribution system [1][2][3][4]. These outage events can result in substantial financial losses [5][6][7], such as food spoilage [8,9] or a serious health emergency in a health facility [10], especially when back-up sources of generation fail [11].…”