Effects of normal weather conditions on interruptions in distribution systems

Power disturbances are a major concern in a power distribution system because of economic and customer satisfaction losses. Among many the causes of power disturbances, weather plays a vital role. Hence, it is important to gain an understanding of the effects of normal weather conditions on power distribution interruptions. This article shows that normal weather conditions do have an effect on the frequency of power distribution interruptions. Normal weather conditions refers to weather conditions that are not extreme (e.g., tornadoes, storms, lightning, hurricanes) but rather are common in everyday life, including but not limited to temperature, rain, wind, relative humidity, and pressure. The authors explain the different steps in analyzing the normal weather impact, from weather and interruption data collection to obtaining significant results. A Poisson regression model is also performed to determine the significance of several weather variables and the relative magnitude of the contributions of each variable to the total number of daily outages.