High-Fidelity Resource Adequacy Study Considering Hurricane-Driven Offshore Wind Outages: A PJM Case Study

We propose a method to quantify the impact of hurricane-driven outages of offshore wind (OSW) generators on resource adequacy (RA). This method is applied to the PJM market, which is geographically exposed to hurricanes and includes approximately half of the 30 GW of OSW planned for installation in the Atlantic Ocean by 2030. While PJM has extensive reliability planning processes, detailed information on hurricane-specific hardening measures for OSW assets is not yet available given the limited existing deployment. Using NREL's probabilistic resource adequacy tool (PRAS), we develop a high fidelity reliability model of PJM that incorporates storage and individual transmission lines in addition to generators. We estimate forced outage rates and durations by explicitly modeling hurricane-induced preventive shutdowns and post-hurricane inspections and repairs. Multiple scenarios are considered to capture the probabilities and severities of hurricane-driven damage to OSW turbines, based on wind speeds extracted from a catalog of 100,000 years of simulated Atlantic hurricanes. To cost effectively mitigate these reliability risks, we propose a resource augmentation strategy with investments in generation, storage, and/or transmission. Our results indicate that hurricane-related reliability risks in PJM can be mitigated by constructing up to 210 MW of peaker capacity (in the most conservative scenario), which is approximately 0.1% of PJM's installed capacity, at a cost several orders of magnitude below PJM's annual capacity market revenues. Our findings highlight the need for strategic investments to maintain system reliability as OSW deployment grows in hurricane-prone regions, emphasizing the importance of system planners and policymakers to account for extreme-weather-driven outages in long-term capacity planning.