Storm outage management system
AssigneeNorthview Weather LLC
InventorJason Shafer
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system according to the present disclosure assists utility companies with understanding the potential impact of wet snow and ice accumulations that have the potential to bring down utility infrastructure, such as power lines. The system described herein uses a probabilistic forecast methodology, using weather forecasts as inputs, to develop probable ice and wet-snow accretion predictions and uses those predictions to develop a number of possible events and, in certain embodiments, the events' locations and time of occurrence. The system can provide a probabilistic map of potential impacts to utility lines, thereby giving utility companies the ability to proactively deploy crews before storms arrive.
Claims20
A utility infrastructure outage prediction system that is based on meteorological data, the meteorological data including weather forecast information, the system comprising:
- a processing device;
- and
- a non-transitory, processor-readable storage medium, the non-transitory, processor readable storage medium comprising one or more programming instructions thereon that, when executed, cause the processing device to:
- receive a plurality of weather forecasts related to a geographical region, the plurality of weather forecasts having spatial and temporal information;
- receive an infrastructure dataset that includes information related to a location of utility infrastructure;
- receive a sensed dataset including a predicted temperature and humidity information associated with the geographical region;
- automatically determine a precipitation type and an amount of precipitation in a plurality of sub-regions of the geographical region based upon the plurality of weather forecasts and the sensed dataset;
- and
- predict a potential damage to the utility infrastructure and a location and timing of the potential damage based upon the precipitation type, the amount of precipitation, and the infrastructure dataset.
A utility infrastructure outage prediction system comprising:
- a plurality of sensors suitable for collecting information related to weather and including, at least a temperature and humidity sensor, wherein the plurality of sensors are spatially dispersed within a utility infrastructure region;
- a computer system in electronic communication with the plurality of sensors, the computer system having a processing device and a non-transitory, processor-readable storage medium, the non-transitory, processor readable storage medium comprising one or more programming instructions thereon that, when executed, cause the processing device to:
- receive, as inputs, a plurality of weather forecast datasets;
- receive, as inputs, information from the plurality of sensors;
- develop probable ice and/or wet-snow accretion predictions based upon the plurality of weather forecast datasets and the information from the plurality of sensors;
- and
- determine a number, timing, and location of possible outage events in the utility infrastructure region based on the probable ice and/or wet snow accretion predictions.
A method of deploying infrastructure resources based upon weather forecasts comprising:
- creating a probabilistic weather forecast from a plurality of forecasts multiple days before a storm impacts a desired region, wherein the creating includes the steps of:
- receiving a plurality of weather forecasts related to a geographical region, the plurality of weather forecasts having spatial and temporal information;
- receiving an infrastructure dataset that includes information related to the location of utility infrastructure;
- receiving a sensed dataset including a predicted temperature and humidity information associated with the geographical region;
- automatically determining a precipitation type and an amount of precipitation in a plurality of sub-regions of the geographical region based upon the plurality of weather forecasts and the sensed dataset;
- and
- predicting a potential damage to the utility infrastructure and a location and timing of the potential damage based upon the precipitation type, the amount of precipitation, and the infrastructure dataset;
- and
- deploying infrastructure resources based upon the probabilistic weather forecast.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.