ABSTRACT
One method often used to assign a value to electricity is to assess the impacts of blackouts. Blackouts are typically identified as a prolonged loss of electric service from storms or other extraordinary events. Blackouts are often characterized as lasting one hour or longer and impacting 50,000 people or more. Outages caused by severe weather such as thunderstorms, hurricanes and blizzards account for 58% of outages observed since 2002 and 87% of outages affecting 50,000 or more customers. In all, 679 widespread outages occurred between 2003 and 2012 due to severe weather. During the past decade, there have been several efforts to assess the economic cost of power interruptions and power quality. During the 1990s, the Electric Power Research Institute estimated the national cost of 26 billion dollars per year based on a figure that had been presented at a power quality conference.
