Page 24 - NBIZ October 2021

Figure 4
Power Demand at an Industrial Facility during Production and Downtime demand. The global climate models,
downscaled to specific geographies,
can provide the frequency, duration,
and intensity of extreme weather
events (e.g., droughts, extreme
precipitation, and heatwaves, etc.)
with a certain level of confidence.
Both extreme weather event-related
outages and changes in future
demand, largely due to extreme heat,
impact costs of operation. These
costs are ultimately incorporated
into the cost-benefit balance of a
resilient microgrid to better assess
the value of the investment.
In step 5, building managers can
start considering the value of resil-
ience. This is estimated based on the
cost of outage or Value of Lost Load
consider current weather risks and disruptive potential of weather-related (VoLL) - power disturbance studies,
outages to see what weather patterns power blackouts. This data is tracked willingness to pay/avoid, direct costs
result in power disruptions/outages. by local utility companies. Power out- of damage caused by outages, the pro-
To help with this, it is recommended ages in Texas have come about by a duction function, and revealed prefer-
that System Average Interruption significant variety of extreme weather ence. From steps 3 and 4 the building
Frequency Index (SAIFI) which is events, except for earthquakes. Most manager has a better understanding
the average number of interruptions commonly, the outages in this region of the likelihood of an outage. During
that a customer would experience, are due to high winds, flooding, and step 5, the building manager com-
and the System Average Interruption hurricanes. bines this likelihood with the cost of
Duration Index (SAIDI), which is the In step 4, downscaled climate an outage. Figure 5 provides a set of
average outage duration for each data is incorporated into the examples of the cost of outages. Since
customer served be considered. Indi- decision-making processes to help the outage costs differ for each user,
cators of the local power grid quality companies estimate the likelihood of and although these methods provide
like SAIFI and SAIDI provide good in- extreme weather events, as well as reliable estimations of that value
sights on the historic frequency and oscillations in their future energy across industries and outage types,

Figure 5
Examples of Cost of Outage

24 NBIZ ■ October 2021