Publication: Stronger Power: Improving Power Sector Resilience to Natural Hazards
Date
2019-06
ISSN
Published
2019-06
Author(s)
Nicolas, Claire
Potter van Loon, Albertine
Oguah, Sam
Schweikert, Amy
Deinert, Mark
Koks, Elco
Arderne, Christopher
Cubas, Diana
Li, Jie
Abstract
The power sector is both highly
vulnerable to natural hazards and a priority for any
country'srecovery and reconstruction. After Hurricane
Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, most of the power gridwas
down. One year and tens of billions of dollars later some
customers were yet to be reconnected to the main grid. This
type of long and widespread power outage has major
consequences on people's health and well-being, for
instance through lacking access to refrigeration for food
and medicine, and on the ability of firms to produce and
provide people with goods, services, jobs, and income. In
most countries, the power system is designed to cope with
high-frequency but relatively low impact events.
Low-frequency, high-impact events – such as many natural
disasters – are rarely considered fully, and the
implementation of planned management measures is often
patchy. Furthermore, the power system is a special kind of
infrastructure due to the heterogeneity of the generation
assets and its wide spatial distribution. The latter means
that power systems are often exposed to natural hazards and
sometimes to more than one hazard, leading to high repair
costs when disasters strike. This paper, prepared as a
sectoral note for the Lifelines report on infrastructure
resilience, investigates the vulnerability of the power
system to natural hazards and climate change, and provides
recommendations to increase its resilience. It first
describes how power outages are often the consequence of
natural disasters and outlines the main vulnerabilities of
the power sector. It then proposes a range of approaches and
solutions for building a more resilient power sector – from
increased robustness to greater flexibility – showing that
the additional cost of resilience is not high if resources
are well spent. Finally, it describes how emergency
preparedness and disaster recovery encompass not only
technical aspects, like asset strengthening or criticality
analysis, but also "softer" skills, like
governance, regulatory or capacity building, and education.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Nicolas, Claire; Rentschler, Jun; Potter van Loon, Albertine; Oguah, Sam; Schweikert, Amy; Deinert, Mark; Koks, Elco; Arderne, Christopher; Cubas, Diana; Li, Jie; Ichikawa, Eriko. 2019. Stronger Power: Improving Power Sector Resilience to Natural Hazards. Background paper for Lifelines;. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31910 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”