Projecting Changes in Power Outage Frequency due to Pluvial Flooding in Northwest England

Oral Presentation

The current UK energy system and infrastructure was built for the climatic conditions of the time. With climate change, extreme climate events are increasing, causing pressure on the energy infrastructure, which could result in more frequent power failures, impacting both producers and customers. Energy suppliers in the UK have an opportunity to build climate resilience and provide high value services to customers, for example in the form of distributed energy solutions that can help customers access electricity even during an extreme climate-related local outage.Here we present a proof-of-concept analysis of outage data from a local distribution network operator (DNO) in concert with HadUK Grid aggregated data (2000-2022) and UKCP18 12-km Regional Climate Model projections (2000-2080) to determine future annual outage frequency (AOF) trends. We investigate the seasonality of different weather-related outage causes, such as wind and gust, pluvial flooding, snow and ice, and their respective impacts on the DNO’s customers. While wind and gust are the most frequent cause of weather-related outages, pluvial flooding has been determined as the most impactful cause on a per-outage basis. Focussing on flooding outages we developed a high-level conditional probability model to calculate expected outage frequencies, with scope for enhancement. As present climate 15-day rainfall totals increase, with greater flooding potential, numbers of grid outages increase per event across the region with potential impact on outage durations. In the probability model median AOF increases would be largely driven by projected increases in winter-time rainfall given no grid-adaptation is made, with a 4.8% increase in AOF by 2040. Other seasons have a negligible impact in the mid-century. These results can inform assessment of distributed energy solutions – products that give customers greater resilience to outages. We will discuss model limitations and avenues of development, as well as the broader relevancy to the energy sector.