The wider regional benefits of power grids improved resilience through tree-trimming operations evidences from Connecticut, USA

Legacy and shockwaves: A spatial analysis of strengthening resilience of the power grid in Connecticut

“…1) To investigate whether spatial spillovers throughout the grid increase the spatial extent of TTOs benefits previously found by Parent et al (2019) and Graziano et al (2020);…”

“…To fulfill these objectives, we build upon an initial assessment of the link between TTOs and power outages developed by Graziano et al (2020) by taking a spatial perspective, and by focusing only on tree-induced outages, which are defined as those lasting more than 5 minutes.…”

“…The reliability of power grids is often seen as a pivotal element for energy transitions (Verbong and Geels, 2007), especially as more and more economic sectors electrify (Scholten et al, 2020), and the frequency of extreme events increases because of climate change (Bartos and Chester, 2015;Cohen et al, 2018;Jenkins, 2021). The increased frequency of these events has led to costly losses for all types of customers across the economy of a region (Graziano et al, 2020;Küfeoǧlu and Lehtonen, 2015). For example, Campbell (2012) reported that storms due to changing climate patterns result in outages costing $20 to $55 billion annually to the U.S. economy.…”

“…Literature on the exact effects of TTOs on reducing vegetation-related outages, is quite scarce, and focuses primarily on prediction models or have worked using aggregated data, (Guikema et al, 2006;Radmer et al, 2002;Cerrai et al, 2019;Most and Weissman, 2012;Ou et al, 2016;Simpson and Bossuyt, 1996) mostly due to limitations in accessing point-level data from utility companies. Recently, Graziano et al (2020) combined disaggregated data with a quasi-CGE to estimate the benefits of reducing power outages in Connecticut.…”

A Statistical Framework for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Vegetation Management in Reducing Power Outages Caused during Storms in Distribution Networks

“…Ref. [30] examines the effectiveness of ETT and SMT grouped together into one class of tree trimming operations (TTOs) and analyzes their effectiveness at preventing all outages of duration greater than five minutes. The results show that with 99% confidence, the outages in the distribution system were reduced by 0.117/mile of TTOs, but this study did not control for storm intensity and evaluated all outages as opposed to only those caused by storms.…”