Estimation of Post-Storm Restoration Times for Electric Power Distribution Systems

As a result of storm-related damage to electric power systems, customers may experience business interruption and general inconvenience when they lose power. This chapter presents a new statistical approach to post-storm electric power restoration time estimation, and applies it for hurricanes and ice storms for three major electric power companies that together serve most of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Accelerated failure time (AFT) models, a type of survival analysis model, were fitted using an unusually large dataset that includes the companies' experiences in six hurricanes and eight ice storms. The models can be used to better inform customers and the public of expected post-storm power restoration times. The chapter describes the real-life post-storm electric power outage restoration process and summarizes previous work in restoration modeling for infrastructure systems in extreme events. The data used in this analysis are described, followed by a discussion of the AFT outage duration models.