The electricity scene from above: Exploring power grid inconsistencies using satellite data in Accra, Ghana

Shah, Zeal; Klugman, Noah; Cadamuro, Gabriel; Hsu, Feng-Chi; Elvidge, Christopher D.; Taneja, Jay

doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.119237

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…For example, in one outage definition, we required 0.1% of total county customers to be without power for 8+ hours, but the composition of the 0.1% without power could change during the outage. Spatiotemporal granularity is necessary for accurate outage exposure measurement, so future studies, particularly those interested in linking outages to individual health outcomes, should consider exposure at a sub-county geographic resolution such as the household or building level, perhaps using improved power utility data, internet-connected devices, or satellite imagery 42 – 46 . Finally, we identified county-days where severe weather and climate events co-occurred with outages, but due to data limitations, we could not causally link severe weather and climate events to outages.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatiotemporal distribution of power outages with climate events and social vulnerability in the USA

McBrien

Flores

et al. 2023

Nat Commun

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Power outages threaten public health. While outages will likely increase with climate change, an aging electrical grid, and increased energy demand, little is known about their frequency and distribution within states. Here, we characterize 2018–2020 outages, finding an average of 520 million customer-hours total without power annually across 2447 US counties (73.7% of the US population). 17,484 8+ hour outages (a medically-relevant duration with potential health consequences) and 231,174 1+ hour outages took place, with greatest prevalence in Northeastern, Southern, and Appalachian counties. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Michigan counties experience a dual burden of frequent 8+ hour outages and high social vulnerability and prevalence of electricity-dependent durable medical equipment use. 62.1% of 8+ hour outages co-occur with extreme weather/climate events, particularly heavy precipitation, anomalous heat, and tropical cyclones. Results could support future large-scale epidemiology studies, inform equitable disaster preparedness and response, and prioritize geographic areas for resource allocation and interventions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatiotemporal distribution of power outages with climate events and social vulnerability in the USA

McBrien

Flores

et al. 2023

Nat Commun

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“…The most apparent impact of large-scale, wide-area and long duration power interruptions is the dimming or complete loss of lighting in a region. Previous works have shown that with careful data cleaning steps, using satellites to track changes in lighting levels can help with detecting areas experiencing interruptions [24,34,35]. Historically, satellite-recorded NTL imagery has been the most popular choice for tracking illumination over space in time for three reasons: (i) globally consistent and regular measurements, (ii) high spatio-temporal resolution, and (iii) low/no cost.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dimming of a pixel's radiance (negative z-score) can be indicative of presence of an outage in that pixel [24,35]; however, not all the pixels with negative z-scores can be considered as outage pixels [35]. So, in the final stage of the pipeline, we translate the z-score map into an outages map by calibrating an optimum Texas-wide z-score threshold value such that all the pixels with z-score less than the threshold are classified as outage pixels and the rest as normal.…”

Section: Estimating Total Customers In Outagementioning

confidence: 99%

The inequitable distribution of power interruptions during the 2021 Texas winter storm Uri

Shah

Carvallo

Hsu

et al. 2023

Environ. Res.: Infrastruct. Sustain.

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Climate change induced extreme weather events will increase in intensity and frequency, leading to longer and widespread electricity outages. As an example, Winter Storm Uri in Texas left over 4.5 million customers without power between 14 and 18 February, 2021. The social justice consequences of these events remain an outstanding question, as outage data are typically only available at the county level, obscuring detailed experiences. We produce a first-of-its-kind unique spatially resolved dataset of interruptions using satellite data on nighttime lights to track blackouts at the census block group (CBG) level. Correlating this dataset with demographic data reveals that minority CBGs were 1.5-3 times more likely to suffer from interruptions compared to predominantly white CBGs, whereas income status was positively correlated with the likelihood of interruption. The presence of critical facilities – including police and fire stations, hospitals, and water treatment facilities – in a CBG reduced the chances of interruptions by around 16%, a small difference that does not otherwise explain the disparity among communities. We suggest explanations, test a subset of them, and propose further work needed to explain what drives these disparities.

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Nighttime light remote sensing for urban applications: Progress, challenges, and prospects

Zheng

Seto

Zhou

et al. 2023

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

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The electricity scene from above: Exploring power grid inconsistencies using satellite data in Accra, Ghana

Cited by 9 publications

References 16 publications

Spatiotemporal distribution of power outages with climate events and social vulnerability in the USA

Spatiotemporal distribution of power outages with climate events and social vulnerability in the USA

The inequitable distribution of power interruptions during the 2021 Texas winter storm Uri

Nighttime light remote sensing for urban applications: Progress, challenges, and prospects

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