Dr. Cerrai

As Connecticut moves toward greater electrification and constant connectivity, prolonged power outages are becoming increasingly disruptive, with significant socio-economic consequences. Severe storms are the primary factor responsible for extended loss of power, and the prediction of their impact on the electric grid is essential for power utilities to take timely and effective actions to keep our lights on. During winter storms, the most critical drivers of outages are the density of falling snow in snowstorms and the radial ice accretion on trees and power lines in ice storms. An incorrect snow density forecast (dry vs sticky, wet snow), or a slight change in temperature that moves the ice storm from a rural to a populated area, can lead to errors of orders of magnitude in storms impacts. During hurricanes, power outage forecasts are highly sensitive to a wide range of variables, including its track, wind and gust fields, precipitation, soil moisture and vegetation conditions. In this presentation, after discussing the challenges in power outage predictions and some recent storms affecting the State of Connecticut, I will broaden the discussion to resilience modeling frameworks and broader considerations of weather impacts on the natural and built environment.

Biography:

Dr. Cerrai is Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut, and Interim Director of the Eversource Energy Center. His research spans power outage prediction and restoration modeling for electric transmission and distribution systems, grid resilience modeling, electric demand and renewable energy integration forecasting, vegetation uprooting prediction, ground validation of wintry precipitation measurements and wildfire ignition modeling. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award and has served as PI or Co-PI on projects totaling more than $20 million in research and development funding from private companies and federal agencies. Sponsors include Eversource Energy (CT, MA, NH), Avangrid (NYSEG, UI), Exelon (BGE, PECO, PEPCO, Delmarva Power, Atlantic City Electric, ComEd), Dominion Energy, ISO-New England, NYCHA, NASA, NSF, EPA, and the U.S. Department of Energy.