Abstract:
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Hurricanes regularly impact the U.S., leading to widespread and prolonged power outages. Utilities benefit from accurate pre-event forecasts of impacts, allowing them to better plan their requests for external crews and repair material. These are decisions are costs in the 10s of millions of dollars, yet under-preparation can lead to prolonged power outages. This paper presents the current version of a hurricane power outage forecasting model developed for the U.S. Department of Energy. This model is based on an ensemble forecasting model and leverages both an interdisciplinary set of data and a physical hurricane wind field model. The forecasting model achieves good predictive accuracy while being applicable along the entire U.S. coastline.
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