System outage fragility for power systems: A robust data-driven framework for disparity analysis using multiple hurricane events

This study introduces System Outage Fragility (SOF), a novel and robust data-driven framework for analyzing power system disparities by capturing system trends and behaviors across multiple extreme climatic events including hurricanes. Compared to traditional single-event metrics, SOF provides a comprehensive assessment of spatial vulnerabilities and system fragility by accounting for diverse hazard intensities, physical impacts, and outage dynamics, offering deeper insights into outage dynamics and hazard impacts. SOF is applied to power system outages at the county level in Florida for 11 hurricanes from 2017 to 2022, providing valuable insights into the disparities across different utility providers—Investor-Owned, Municipal, and Rural. The analysis reveals that the most fragile counties are Washington, Hardee, Calhoun, and Holmes, while Osceola and Santa Rosa demonstrate the highest resilience. On average, 22% and 76% of counties of All providers reach 50% of the maximum power outages under ERA5 averaged-area wind speeds of 15 to 30 m/s and 30 to 45 m/s, respectively, indicating a potentially significant hurricane vulnerability. The study identifies two high-fragility clusters in the northwest and southern central regions and two high-robustness clusters in the central and southeast regions, with intermediate fragility elsewhere. The potential of SOF for advancing disparity studies is discussed, underscoring the need for multi-event, data-driven approaches to assess energy inequalities in the face of natural hazards. • Introduces SOF as a multi-event framework for assessing power outage fragility. • Analyzes county-level outage fragility for 11 hurricanes from 2017 to 2022 in Florida. • Identifies clusters of high and low outage fragility across different regions. • Compares outage fragility across Investor-Owned, Municipal, and Rural providers. • Reveals significant spatial disparities in outage fragility among Florida counties.