@article{prieto-miranda_kern_2024, title={High-resolution, open-source modeling of inland flooding impacts on the North Carolina bulk electric power grid}, url={https://doi.org/10.1088/2753-3751/ad3558}, DOI={10.1088/2753-3751/ad3558}, abstractNote={
 Although damages to local distribution systems from wind and fallen trees are typically responsible for the largest fraction of electricity outages during hurricanes, outages caused by flooding of electrical substations pose a unique risk. Electrical substations are a key component of electric power systems, and in some areas, the loss of a single substation can cause widespread power outages. Before repairing damaged substations, utilities must first allow floodwaters to recede, potentially leaving some customers without power for weeks following storms. As economic losses from flooding continue to increase in the U.S., there has been increasing attention paid to the potential impacts of flooding on power systems. Yet, this attention has mostly been limited to geospatial risk assessments that identify what assets are in the path of flooding. Here, we present the first major attempt to understand how flooding from hurricanes and other extreme precipitation events affects the dynamic behavior of power networks, including losses of demand and generation, and altered power flows through transmission lines. We use North Carolina, hit by major hurricanes in three of the past seven years, as a test case. Using open-source data of grid infrastructure, we develop a high-resolution direct current optimal power flow model that simulates electricity production and generators and power flows through a network consisting of 662 nodes and 790 lines. We then simulate grid operations during the historical (2018) storm Hurricane Florence. Time series of flooding depth at a discrete set of “high water” mark points from the storm are used to spatially interpolate flooding depth across the footprint area of the storms on an hourly basis. Outages of substations and solar farms due to flooding are translated to location-specific losses of demand and solar power production throughout the network. We perform sensitivity analysis to explore grid impacts as a function of the height of sensitive equipment at substations. Results shed light on the potential for localized impacts from flooding to have wider impacts throughout the grid (including in areas not affected by flooding), with performance tracked in terms of transmission line flows/congestion, generation outputs, and customer outages.}, journal={Environmental Research: Energy}, author={Prieto-Miranda, Luis and Kern, Jordan D}, year={2024}, month={Mar} }
 @article{haas_prieto-miranda_ghorbani_breyer_2022, title={Revisiting the potential of pumped-hydro energy storage: A method to detect economically attractive sites}, volume={181}, ISSN={["1879-0682"]}, url={https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2021.09.009}, DOI={10.1016/j.renene.2021.09.009}, abstractNote={This study innovatively combines a set of methods to assess the economic potential of pumped hydro energy storage. It first provides a method based on geographic information systems to study the potential of pumped-hydro for different topologies. Second, using cost estimates for each identified site, cost-potential curves are derived. Finally, these curves are used for planning a fully renewable system to assess their impact on investment recommendations. Applications to Chile, Peru, and Bolivia show the usability of the methods. Over 450 pumped-hydro locations are identified, totaling around 20 TWh (or 1600 GW of installed capacity with 12 h of storage). These numbers exceed by 20-fold the projected daily energy demand of the corresponding countries. When taking into account investment costs, most locations are cheaper than current Li-ion batteries, but only some are expected to remain competitive in the future. When using the resulting cost-potential curves to design a future energy system, the planning tool recommends about 1.6 and 5.0 times more pumped-hydro storage compared to using average values and literature values, respectively. These differences underline the significance of the found cost curves.}, journal={RENEWABLE ENERGY}, publisher={Elsevier BV}, author={Haas, Jannik and Prieto-Miranda, Luis and Ghorbani, Narges and Breyer, Christian}, year={2022}, month={Jan}, pages={182–193} }