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Impact of Natural Disasters on Electricity Supply [Guest Editorial]

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Abstract

The Security of Energy Supply has become a major concern worldwide, given modern society's strong dependence on its adequate delivery. Not only does the functioning of industry, transportation, and communication and computer systems depend on a continuous energy supply, but our complete style of living collapses when energy fails. Surges in fuel prices, political conflicts, wars, and natural disasters directly threaten energy supply, and important policy concerns are being implemented as countries look at ways to protect themselves.
22 IEEE power & energy magazine march/april 2011
T
THE SECURITY OF ENERGY SUP-
ply has become a major concern world-
wide, given modern society’s strong
dependence on its adequate delivery.
Not only does the functioning of in-
dustry, transportation, and communi-
cation and computer systems depend
on a continuous energy supply, but our
complete style of living collapses when
energy fails. Surges in fuel prices,
political confl icts, wars, and natural
disasters directly threaten energy sup-
ply, and important policy concerns are
being implemented as countries look at
ways to protect themselves.
Electricity is at the center of atten-
tion as today many essential services
(water, gas, communications, and the
Internet, for example) and infrastruc-
tures depend on its continuity for their
smooth functioning. On the other
hand, electricity power networks have
developed to become large and highly
complex technical systems, geographi-
cally extended, with differing degrees
of connectivity, requiring complex op-
eration in real time to balance supply
and varying demand.
The occurrence of natural disas-
ters and their impact on electric power
system functioning has been of inter-
est to countries worldwide, particu-
larly in relation to earthquakes. Several
countries such as Chile, China, Haiti,
Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the
Philippines, Turkey, and the United
States have experienced severe earth-
quakes that resulted in serious damage
to their energy supply infrastructure
and at times to their economic devel-
opment, in addition to the loss of lives
and property. But not only earthquakes
and related tsunamis menace our elec-
tric infrastructure; havoc can also be
caused by severe weather condition
such as typhoons, hurricanes, torna-
dos, fl oods and landslides, ice storms,
volcanic eruptions, and
even wildfi res.
In response to this,
studies and research in
energy security and natu-
ral disasters have been
conducted around the
world. Research cen-
ters have been created;
for example, the portal
http://www.cbsnews.
com/digitaldan/disaster/
disasters.shtml lists many
important links on the
subject in the United
States. Similar insti-
tutions are also in Asia,
as listed in http://www.
adrc.asia/link/ index.html.
Specifi c studies focusing
on the impact on electricity supply
systems may be found in some of these
centers, but there is little published
in IEEE periodicals on the matter, al-
though conference publications have
provided some information.
The complexity of power system
networks makes the task of maintain-
ing a highly reliable operation a dif-
cult one, even in normal conditions.
Facing short unexpected interrup-
tions has been a challenge for mod-
ern power system design and control,
and much effort is placed on keeping
the system in secure states rather than
alert ones. Nevertheless, these efforts
occasionally fail, and major blackouts
have occurred even as a consequence
of isolated faults. Thus, it would be
impossible to keep normal intercon-
nected power system operation
when major natural disasters occur.
Instead, the challenge is
to curtail the impact of
disasters on the power
system and to carry out
recovery actions so as to
minimize social disrup-
tion. Thus, efforts center
on power system resil-
ience, with resilience
defi ned as the ability of
a power system to with-
stand a major disruption
with limited degradation
and to recover within a
narrow time frame with
constricted costs. The
goals of resilience en-
gineering are a reduced
likelihood of damage to
critical power systems
and components, limited consequenc-
es of failures on society, and reduced
time to supply recovery. There is
no doubt that power system perfor-
mance will be diminished when a
major disaster strikes, but adequate
countermeasures and response plans
can help the system to return to its
original functionality. Resilience not
only depends on equipment, build-
ing codes, and technology but more
so on the organization and standard-
ized emergency preparedness of
well-structured electricity companies.
natural disasters
their impact on electricity supply
Hugh Rudnick
Digital O bject Identi fi er 10.1109 /MPE.2 010.939922
guest editorial
D ate of publicat ion: 23 Februar y 2011
Natural
disasters and
their impact
on electric
power system
functioning
has been of
interest to
countries
worldwide.
24 IEEE power & energy magazine march/april 2011
Often after a major disaster oc-
curs, a proposal to take anticipatory
strategies and invest more on security
and n–2 or n–3 planning criteria is of-
fered. However, this can waste signif-
icant investment against threats that
may rarely or never occur, whereas re-
silience strategies can provide better
protection with lower cost against
uncertain events. That does not divert
manufacturers and standards develop-
ment organizations from designing
and building power, communications,
and computer equipment that can bet-
ter cope with the impacts of those di-
sasters in electrical networks.
This special issue attempts to look
at specifi c disasters worldwide, quanti-
fying their affects on the power systems
they have impacted. We have asked
experts and utility engineers to share
the challenges faced and the lessons
learned in different events, and this
has resulted in fi ve diverse articles of
broadly different disasters.
In our fi rst article, Qiang Xie and
Ruiyuan Zhu review how Chinese
power systems have coped with three
types of natural disasters that have tak-
en place in recent years: severe wind
storms, ice and freezing rain, and earth-
quakes. The interruption of electric ser-
vice caused by these natural disasters
led to devastating economic losses in
rapidly developing China. The lessons
learned from these disasters and their
consequences are described, as well as
actions taken to reduce their impact in
the future.
Hugh Rudnick, Sebastian Mocarquer,
Eduardo Andrade, Esteban Vuchetich,
and Pedro Miquel author the second
article and provide a comprehensive
report of the February 2010 earth-
quake, and related tsunami, that struck
the central part of Chile. The authors
assess how the earthquake impacted
generation, transmission, distribution,
and system operation and share chal-
lenges faced by electric companies, and
their responses.
In the following presentation, An-
shel Schiff, who has traveled world-
wide to learn effects of earthquakes
and draw lessons from them, reports
on the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
This event occurred in a densely
populated area northwest of down-
town Los Angeles, California. Based
on his experience, he elaborates on
how the Northridge earthquake and
more recent ones in Chile and Mexi-
co have influenced equipment design
and testing, substation design, and
utility practices.
Then Nicholas Abi-Samra and
Wayne Henry report on the impact of
oods on substations and how to protect
against and recover from them and de-
scribe how a major U.S. utility handled
oods in the midwestern United States.
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26 IEEE power & energy magazine march/april 2011
The last article of this
issue theme deals with
the menaces of terrorism
on infrastructure that,
together with cyberat-
tacks, is a growing world-
wide concern. These
potential man-made di-
sasters often focus on the
energy supply, a strong
tool to better shock soci-
ety and its foundations.
Colombia has been a
country historically hit
by terrorism over the
past two decades, and
the transmission network
has been a frequent ter-
rorist objective. Pablo H. Corredor
and María E. Ruiz describe attacks on
the electrical infrastructure, resultant
power failures, restora-
tion procedures after a
blackout, development of
constrained transmission,
cost impact and business
recovery costs, and les-
sons learned from these
emergency situations.
Finally, for the “In
My View” column, we
asked Eric Fujisaki and
Jean-Bernard Dastous,
chairs of two related
IEEE committees (IEEE
693–Recommended
Practice for Seismic
Design of Substations
and IEEE 1527–Recom-
mended Practice for the Design of
Flexible Buswork) to offer arguments
on why they believe a much-needed
and benefi cial approach to prepare for
natural disasters is the development of
international standards.
Clearly, there is no single answer
to protect our electricity infrastructure
from major natural or man-made di-
sasters. Given past events and learning
from them, we must learn how to make
our systems more resilient and robust
in the face of future uncertain and criti-
cal threats, while developing new tech-
nologies and management features. As
Fujisaki and Dastous say, “a reliable
electric power supply following disas-
ters is too important to be left to the
same old approaches of the past.” This
issue will become more relevant in the
future, as uncertainty increases, and
with the possibility of global warm-
ing causing even more challenging
weather- created disasters. p&e
We must
learn how
to make our
systems more
resilient and
robust in the
face of future
uncertain
and critical
threats.
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