A Comparison of Top-Down Statistical Models With Bottom-Up Methods for Power System Reliability Estimation in High Wind Events Roshanak Nateghi, Seth D. Guikema Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218. December 15, 2010 Abstract The North American electric power grid is considered to be the largest and most complex technical system in the world. Reliability of this heterogeneous and highly interconnected systems is paramount since our national security, digital economy, and transportation and water systems require robust operation of the electric power system. The focus of this paper is on comparing top-down statistical approaches with bottom-up engineering models that are used in estimating the reliability of power systems during hurricanes and high wind events. It then gives a synthesized overview of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and highlights areas in which additional research is needed. 1 Introduction Major power outages can affect millions of customers and businesses and lead to catastrophic so- cial and economic impacts. For example the cost incurred by a large utility affected by storms is estimated to range from $100,000 to $1,00000 per hour (Zhou et al. 2006). Power outages can occur due to a variety of reasons such as erroneous planning and operation, equipment failure, non-optimal load conditions and severe weather (Cheng et al. 2009). The restoration of interrupted power due to transmission equipment failure can typically be done within a day, even during the events where a large geographic area is impacted. However, restoration efforts in the cases of outages caused by severe weather conditions and earthquakes take much longer since there are sig- nificant, wide-spread damages throughout the power system infrastructure of an area. For example, it was estimated that about 1.3 million customers of one of the largest utilities in the central Gulf Coast Region in the U.S. lost power after the landfall of hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the outage lasted for up to about 12 days in some areas. Because of the high costs associated with failures and the dependence of other critical infrastructure systems on electric power systems, the availability of accurate, practical methods for assessing and managing the risk of failure of these systems dur- ing hurricanes and other high wind events is critical. This paper reviews the two basic classes of 594 Copyright ASCE 2011 ICVRAM and ISUMA 2011 Vulnerability, Uncertainty, and Risk Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by Purdue University Libraries on 09/23/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.