TY - JOUR
T1 - Quantifying cascading power outages during climate extremes considering renewable energy integration
AU - Xu, Luo
AU - Lin, Ning
AU - Poor, H. Vincent
AU - Xi, Dazhi
AU - Perera, A. T.D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025.
PY - 2025/12
Y1 - 2025/12
N2 - Climate extremes, such as hurricanes, combined with large-scale integration of environment-sensitive renewables, could exacerbate the risk of widespread power outages. We introduce a coupled climate-energy model for cascading power outages, which comprehensively captures the impacts of climate extremes on renewable generation, and transmission and distribution networks. The model is validated with the 2022 Puerto Rico catastrophic blackout during Hurricane Fiona – a unique system-wide blackout event with complete records of weather-induced outages. The model reveals a resilience pattern that was not captured by the previous models: early failure of certain critical components enhances overall system resilience. Sensitivity analysis on various scenarios of behind-the-meter solar integration demonstrates that lower integration levels (below 45%, including the current level) exhibit minimal impact on system resilience in this event. However, surpassing this critical level without pairing it with energy storage can exacerbate the probability of catastrophic blackouts.
AB - Climate extremes, such as hurricanes, combined with large-scale integration of environment-sensitive renewables, could exacerbate the risk of widespread power outages. We introduce a coupled climate-energy model for cascading power outages, which comprehensively captures the impacts of climate extremes on renewable generation, and transmission and distribution networks. The model is validated with the 2022 Puerto Rico catastrophic blackout during Hurricane Fiona – a unique system-wide blackout event with complete records of weather-induced outages. The model reveals a resilience pattern that was not captured by the previous models: early failure of certain critical components enhances overall system resilience. Sensitivity analysis on various scenarios of behind-the-meter solar integration demonstrates that lower integration levels (below 45%, including the current level) exhibit minimal impact on system resilience in this event. However, surpassing this critical level without pairing it with energy storage can exacerbate the probability of catastrophic blackouts.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-025-57565-4
DO - 10.1038/s41467-025-57565-4
M3 - Article
C2 - 40089462
AN - SCOPUS:105000161206
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 16
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
IS - 1
M1 - 2582
ER -