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Steven Quiring: Modeling Weather Risks: Applying analytics to inform electrical utilities

Presentation by: 
Dr. Steven M. Quiring
Atmospheric Sciences Program, Department of Geography
The Ohio State University

Sept 11, 2020 at 12:00 PM
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Graphic of power outage predictions for Hurricane Laura
Abstract 
Weather can cause significant damage to the electrical power system, leading to prolonged power interruptions to a large number of customers. The estimated annual cost to the U.S. economy from storm-related power outages is >$20 billion. The number of weather-related outages has increased significantly in recent years. One approach to deal with this problem is to develop predictive techniques for forecasting how storms will impact the power grid hours to days in advance. This information can help utilities, first responders, and emergency managers to better prepare for the outages and more quickly restore power. This presentation summarizes the data-driven power outage models that we have developed for the U.S. Department of Energy and a number of investor-owned electrical utilities in the United States. These models are used to support decision making for near-term events (e.g., pre-storm preparation) and longer-term planning. The development and validation of our models will be presented and our approach for quantifying uncertainty will also be discussed. The talk will also highlight the challenges and successes from recent applications for American Electric Power, FirstEnergy, Southern Company and Southern California Edison. 

Colloquium poster with satellite image of US at night.

Steven Quiring Bio
Dr. Steven M. Quiring is a Professor in the Atmospheric Sciences Program, Department of Geography at The Ohio State University. He is also a Fellow at The Risk Institute at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and a member of the Translational Data Analytics Institute and the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State University. Prior to his arrival at Ohio State in 2016, Dr. Quiring spent 11 years at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on hydroclimatology, weather data analytics and modeling the impact of storms on electrical infrastructure. Dr. Quiring has published more than 90 journal articles and has received more than $14M in funding from federal (DOE, NSF, NOAA) and state (TWDB and TXDEM) agencies, including an NSF CAREER award in 2010. Dr. Quiring is an Associate Editor for Physical Geography and Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. Dr. Quiring received a BA(Hons.) in geography from the University of Winnipeg in 1999, a MA in geography from the University of Manitoba in 2001, and a PhD in climatology from the University of Delaware in 2005.

More details are available on OSU website.