TY - JOUR
T1 - Electricity infrastructure vulnerabilities due to long-term growth and extreme heat from climate change in Los Angeles County
AU - Burillo, Daniel
AU - Chester, Mikhail
AU - Pincetl, Stephanie
AU - Fournier, Eric
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based in part upon work supported by the California Energy Commission under grant number CEC EPC-15-007 , Climate change in Los Angeles County: grid vulnerability to extreme events, and the National Science Foundation under grant number 1360509 , 2014–2017, Advancing infrastructure and institutional resilience to climate change for coupled water-energy systems. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the California Energy Commission or the National Science Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Many studies have estimated the effects of rising air temperatures due to climate change on electricity infrastructure systems, but none have quantified impacts in terms of potential outages down to the neighborhood scale. Using high-resolution climate projections, infrastructure maps, and forecasts of peak electricity demand for Los Angeles County (LAC), we estimated vulnerabilities in the electricity infrastructure to 2060. We considered rising air temperatures under IPCC RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 at 2 km2 grid cell resolution, two local government population growth scenarios, different efficiency implementations of new residential and commercial buildings, air conditioners (AC), and higher AC penetration. Results were that generators, substations, and transmission lines could lose up to 20% of safe operating capacities (MW). Moreover, based on recent historical load factors for substations in the Southern California Edison service territory, 848–6724 MW (4–32%) of additional capacity, distributed energy resources, and/or peak load shifting could be needed by 2060 to avoid hardware overloading and outages. If peak load is not mitigated, and/or additional infrastructure capacity not added, then all scenarios result in > 100% substation overloading in Santa Clarita, which would trigger automatic outages, and > 20% substation overloading in at least Lancaster, Palmdale, and Pomona in which protection gear could trip outages within 30 min. Several climate change adaptation options are discussed for electricity infrastructure and building stock with consideration for trade-offs in system stability and other energy and environmental goals.
AB - Many studies have estimated the effects of rising air temperatures due to climate change on electricity infrastructure systems, but none have quantified impacts in terms of potential outages down to the neighborhood scale. Using high-resolution climate projections, infrastructure maps, and forecasts of peak electricity demand for Los Angeles County (LAC), we estimated vulnerabilities in the electricity infrastructure to 2060. We considered rising air temperatures under IPCC RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 at 2 km2 grid cell resolution, two local government population growth scenarios, different efficiency implementations of new residential and commercial buildings, air conditioners (AC), and higher AC penetration. Results were that generators, substations, and transmission lines could lose up to 20% of safe operating capacities (MW). Moreover, based on recent historical load factors for substations in the Southern California Edison service territory, 848–6724 MW (4–32%) of additional capacity, distributed energy resources, and/or peak load shifting could be needed by 2060 to avoid hardware overloading and outages. If peak load is not mitigated, and/or additional infrastructure capacity not added, then all scenarios result in > 100% substation overloading in Santa Clarita, which would trigger automatic outages, and > 20% substation overloading in at least Lancaster, Palmdale, and Pomona in which protection gear could trip outages within 30 min. Several climate change adaptation options are discussed for electricity infrastructure and building stock with consideration for trade-offs in system stability and other energy and environmental goals.
KW - Capacity shortages
KW - Climate change
KW - Electricity infrastructure
KW - Extreme heat
KW - Power outages
KW - Vulnerability assessment
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U2 - 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.12.053
DO - 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.12.053
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85061820342
SN - 0301-4215
VL - 128
SP - 943
EP - 953
JO - Energy Policy
JF - Energy Policy
ER -