Impacts of extreme events on transmission and distribution systems

Extreme events, such as Hurricane Katrina, resulted in widespread damage to the power infrastructure and caused severe outages that affected millions of customers over a period of days. Lessons learned from such events highlight the importance of improving certain utility design practices and emergency preparedness. This paper examines the impacts of extreme weather events, including weather-related impacts on transmission and distribution systems and restoration from floods, winter storms, windstorms, and hurricanes. The paper discusses the effects of heat waves and dry spells on thermal power plants. It synthesizes utility experiences from different storms faced around the globe and includes both lessons learned from actual events as well as EPRI recommendations.