A Partnership of UConn and Eversource

Eversource Energy Center

 

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Accelerating Restorations old

Reliable electric power is an essential service and tenet of a thriving community and a vibrant economy. Providing reliable information on storm restoration progress, especially during summer's peak demand and severe winter weather, enables utility customers and communities to be well prepared alongside their utility.

The combination of a utility’s tools to assess storm damage to the electric distribution system and deploy resources to expedite the restoration process enables UConn to develop models forecasting the length of time required to restore power following a range of storm impacts.

With outage prediction modeling, we are enhancing utility readiness and response, and keeping our communities energized.

did-you-know

  • Following a storm, line and tree (e.g. mutual aid) crews can be called in from across the country and across international borders to help restore power.
  • The Edison Electric Institute coordinates the Mutual Aid Network, a volunteer network of investor-owned utilities that helps coordinate the allocation of mutual aid crews during natural and man-made emergencies.
  • After a storm, utility crews work with first responders to address life-safety locations (e.g., downed wires on a house or car) and to clear blocked roads. At the same time they work to restore critical facilities (police and fire departments, hospitals and town buildings), and the largest number of customers as quickly and safely as possible to expedite the restoration for all customers.

 

Goals & Project Updates

The primary scope of the proposed project is to develop tools to improve the electric restoration process for residential and business customers, and to provide actionable information to utility emergency response management, community and State government officials, residential customers and businesses.

We have begun work on calculating a gridded “tolerance” parameter from socioeconomic data sources that reflects the resilience of local communities to adverse weather events.

We are analyzing historic outage data to develop models to predict restoration times for future storms.

Predicted Storm Restoration Duration

Predicted storm restoration duration for Hurricane Sandy in Eversource Energy CT service territory. Actual duration was 216 hours.

Comparison of the line crews working vs. time in a region of Connecticut during the 2011 October Nor’easter. Red indicates crews that are working, blue indicates crews that are resting, and green indicates crews that are traveling to this region. Note the time it takes for the majority of line crews to reach the region of this State.

Comparison of the line crews working vs. time in a region of Connecticut during the 2011 October Nor’easter. Red indicates crews that are working, blue indicates crews that are resting, and green indicates crews that are traveling to this region. Note the time it takes for the majority of line crews to reach the region of this State.

Team Members

Emmanouil Anagnostou, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Connecticut.
Thomas Layton, Team Leader – Emergency Response
Eversource Energy
Michael Zappone, Manager – Resource Acquisition
Eversource Energy
Feifei Yang, PhD Candidate, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut
Dave Wanik, Assistant Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Connecticut. Senior Modeler at Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company. Research Fellow at Mississippi State University Social Science Research Center
Peter Watson, PhD Candidate, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut

Contact Information

For more information, please contact Malaquias Pena (mpena@uconn.edu).

Members of the media, please contact Center Manager Malaquias Pena (mpena@uconn.edu) directly.

Eversource Energy Center | Innovation Partnership Building: 159 Discovery Drive, Unit 5276, Storrs, CT 06269-5276 | E-Mail: eversourceenergycenter@uconn.edu