The Risk of Cascading Failures in Electrical Grids Triggered by Extreme Weather Events

One of the serious threats related to climate change is an increase in the number and severity of extreme weather events. A prominent example are hurricanes, which result from rising coastal temperatures. Such extreme weather events can cause extensive damages in infrastructure systems and, potentially, destroy components in electricity transmission networks, which in turn can lead to major blackouts. In our recent work, we study the risk of hurricane-induced cascading failures in power systems of the U.S. East Coast using historical wind field data sets. For this purpose, we model the destruction of overhead transmission lines during hurricanes, where each failing line causes a rerouting of power flow in the system. New power flows can overload additional lines, which are then automatically deactivated and thereby cause another rerouting of power flow and so on. Ultimately, a cascade of failures can unfold that can black out large parts of the power system.