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Quantifying cascading power outages during climate extremes considering renewable energy integration.
Luo Xu1,2, Ning Lin3,4, H Vincent Poor5
1Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, 08544, Princeton, NJ, USA. luoxu@princeton.edu.
Nature Communications
|March 16, 2025
Summary
Climate extremes and renewable energy integration can cause power outages. A new model shows that some component failures can improve grid resilience, but high solar integration without storage increases blackout risks.
Area of Science:
- Climate science
- Energy systems engineering
- Network resilience
Background:
- Climate extremes like hurricanes pose risks to power grids.
- Integrating environment-sensitive renewable energy sources can amplify these risks.
- Cascading power outages threaten critical infrastructure and public safety.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a coupled climate-energy model for assessing cascading power outages.
- To comprehensively analyze the impacts of climate extremes on renewable generation and power grids.
- To identify factors influencing system resilience under extreme weather events.
Main Methods:
- Developed a coupled climate-energy model.
- Incorporated impacts on renewable generation, transmission, and distribution networks.
- Validated the model using data from the 2022 Hurricane Fiona blackout in Puerto Rico.
Main Results:
- The model captured weather-induced outages during Hurricane Fiona.
- Revealed a counterintuitive resilience pattern: early failure of critical components can enhance overall system resilience.
- Sensitivity analysis showed that behind-the-meter solar integration below 45% had minimal impact on resilience during this event.
Conclusions:
- High levels of solar integration (above 45%) without energy storage significantly increase the probability of catastrophic blackouts.
- The developed model provides a novel tool for understanding and mitigating climate-related power outage risks.
- System resilience can be enhanced through strategic management of component failures and energy storage integration.
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