Power Outage/ or Blackout
Primary reference(s)
EIS Council, 2019. Black Sky Hazards. Electric Infrastructure Security (EIS) Council. Accessed 9 October 2020.
FEMA, 2018. Be prepared for a power outage. US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Accessed 9 October 2020.
Pescaroli, G., S. Turner, T. Gould, D.E. Alexander and R.T. Wicks, 2017. Cascading Effects and Escalations in Wide Area Power Failures: A Summary for Emergency Planners. Accessed 9 October 2020.
UK Cabinet Office, 2017. National risk register of civil emergencies 2017 edition. UK Cabinet Office, London. Accessed 9 October 2020.
Additional scientific description
Power outage can manifest in various forms, including transient faults, brownouts, and blackouts. They may initiate from both the supply and demand side. In some cases, power outages also materialise as the result of a situational response, such as in order to prevent worse consequences (e.g., rolling blackouts).
Event severity of power outages may exceed the ordinary by far; for instance, the Electric Infrastructure Security Council defines a Black Sky Hazard as “a catastrophic event that severely disrupts the normal functioning of our critical infrastructures in multiple regions for long durations” (EIS Council, 2019). The process of full restoration of the electricity network after the total or partial shutdown of the grid is sometimes termed as black start (UK Cabinet Office, 2017).
Terminology and definitions may vary, even significantly, across operational contexts and agencies.
Metrics and numeric limits
Metrics are in place to capture the many facets of a power outage. Some of these metrics are derived from standards such as IEEE 1366-2012 (IEEE, 2012).
Duration/frequency/occurrence time. For electric power utilities, commonly used reliability indicators include the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) and System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI). In power outages analysis and reporting, it is common to refer to short- to long-duration events as a function of the specific legislative and operational context. For instance, the US Department of Homeland Security (2017) refers to a “long-term (+72 hours) interruption”, while in general customer interruptions are considered as power outages even if much briefer. Important figures are those related to occurrence times of the failure event chains.
Magnitude and size. Typical indicators assess the affected parts and quotas of the grid, the estimated electricity not provided, or the geographic extent of the event. Power outages are often described as local, regional, national, cross-national, up to global. However, geography-based reporting may depend on jurisdictions and generally it is not possible to find an official definition on the size of blackouts (Galbusera and Giannopoulos, 2018).
Number of users affected. Figures typically considered are the number of people or households affected, or similar indicators for industries and businesses, sometimes accompanied by spatio-temporal details (Galbusera and Giannopoulos, 2018).
Economic indices. Indices in use to evaluate supply interruption-related costs include, the Interruption Energy Assessment Rate (IEAR), Value of Lost Load (VOLL), and Willingness to Pay (WTP) (e.g., €/kWh). A comprehensive impact quantification should account for both direct and indirect costs (Galbusera and Giannopoulos, 2018).
Key relevant UN convention / multilateral treaty
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 includes disaster risk reduction objectives related to critical infrastructures (UNISDR, 2015). Disaster reduction policies on power outages stand at the crossway of commercial and market-regulatory treaties, development strategies, and national/cross national security agreements in the field of critical infrastructure protection. At the EU level, relevant policy documents include:
Council Directive 2008/114/EC (European Parliament
Think Tank, 2021);
Directive 2009/72/EC (European Commission, 2009);
Directive (EU) 2019/944 (European Commission, 2019).
Multi-country agreements in place include, for instance, the 2015 International Energy Charter (Energy Charter, 2015).
Examples of drivers, outcomes and risk management
Power outages are associated with cascading and systemic risks rooted at the intersection between physical, societal, functional and organisational dynamics (Pescaroli and Alexander, 2016). Since the early 2000s, larger impacts of power outages have been associated with growing and varying demand, network size and complexity, as well as market deregulation (Helbing et al., 2006). Triggering events include failure of operation, failure of equipment or material damage, human errors, aging infrastructure, and damage caused by natural hazards on equipment, facilities and lines (Amin, 2002; Little, 2002; Petermann et al., 2011; Karagiannis et al., 2017). Directly and indirectly targeted malicious acts include cyberattacks, terrorist acts, or electromagnetic pulse attacks (Amin, 2002; Linkov et al., 2013). The impact of power outages can be amplified if the outage happens in concurrency with climate-related extreme events (e.g., cold waves, heatwaves) (Klinger et al., 2014).
Petermann et al. (2011) illustrated that power outages can heavily disrupt societal and economic functions both directly (due to the lack of energy they rely on) and indirectly (e.g., through interdependencies). According to Pescaroli et al. (2017), the effects of power outages are associated with direct threats to life (e.g., impacts on the health sector, water shortages, or disruption of heating and cooling); indirect threats to life (e.g., increased need of vulnerable population, loss of cash flow); and challenges for operational capacities (e.g., loss of efficiency of emergency services).
Risk management strategies include national and international risk assessments, development of policies and practices for continuity management, training and exercises for complex scenarios involving multiple interdependent failures, assessment of new technologies (e.g., microgrids, cashless transactions), and the improvement of crisis communication before, during and after power outage events (FEMA, 2018).
References
Amin, M., 2002. Security challenges for the electricity infrastructure. Computer, 35.4. Accessed 5 November 2020.
EIS Council, 2019. Black Sky Hazards. Electric Infrastructure Security (EIS) Council. Accessed 9 October 2020.
Energy Charter, 2015. The International Energy Charter. Accessed 30 April 2021.
European Commission, 2009. Directive 2009/72/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 July 2009 concerning common rules for the internal market in electricity and repealing Directive 2003/54/EC. Accessed 30 April 2021.
European Commission, 2019. Directive (EU) 2019/944 and Regulation (EU) 2019/943 on the internal market for electricity (recasts). Accessed 30 April 2021.
European Parliament Think Tank, 2021. European critical infrastructure: Revision of Directive 2008/114/EC. Accessed 30 April 2021.
FEMA, 2018. Be prepared for a power outage. US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Accessed 9 October 2020.
Galbusera, L. and G. Giannopoulos, 2018. On input-output economic models in disaster impact assessment. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 30:186-198.
Helbing, D., H. Ammoser and C. Kühnert, 2006. Disasters as extreme events and the importance of network interactions for disaster response management. In: Albeverio, S., V. Jentsch and H. Kantz (eds.), The Unimaginable and Unpredictable: Extreme Events in Nature and Society. Springer, pp. 319-348.
IEEE, 2012. Std 1366-2012 Guide for Electric Power Distribution Reliability Indices. ICS Code: 29.240.01 - Power transmission and distribution networks in general. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Accessed 9 October 2020.
Karagiannis, G.M., S. Chondrogiannis, E. Krausmann and Z.I. Turksezer, 2017. Power grid recovery after natural hazard impact. Joint Research Center, Ispra, Italy. Accessed 9 October 2020.
Klinger, C., O. Landeg and V. Murray, 2014. Power outages, extreme events and health: a systematic review of the literature from 2011-2012. PLOS Currents Disasters. Accessed 9 October 2020.
Linkov, I., D.A. Eisenberg, K. Plourde, T.P. Seager, J. Allen and A. Kott, 2013. Resilience metrics for cyber systems. Environment Systems and Decisions, 33:471-476.
Little, R.G., 2002. Controlling cascading failure: Understanding the vulnerabilities of interconnected infrastructures. Journal of Urban Technology, 9:109-123.
Pescaroli, G. and D. Alexander, 2016. Critical infrastructure, panarchies and the vulnerability paths of cascading disasters. Natural Hazards, 82:175-192.
Pescaroli, G., S. Turner, T. Gould, D.E. Alexander and R.T. Wicks, 2017. Cascading Effects and Escalations in Wide Area Power Failures: A Summary for Emergency Planners. Accessed 9 October 2020.
Petermann, T., H. Bradke, A. Lüllmann, M. Poetzsch and U. Riehm, 2011. What happens during a blackout. Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bunderstag, Berlin. Accessed 9 October 2020.
UK Cabinet Office, 2017. National risk register of civil emergencies 2017 edition. UK Cabinet Office, London. Accessed 9 October 2020.
UNISDR, 2015. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. Accessed 30 April 2021.
US Department of Homeland Security, 2017. Power Outage Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans Managing the Cascading Impacts from a Long-Term Power Outage. Accessed 9 October 2020.