Oral Presentation AMOS Annual Meeting and International Conference on Tropical Meteorology and Oceanography

Analysis of extreme wind events and their impact on energy infrastructure (#212)

Tess Parker 1 , Roger Dargaville 1 , Michael Reeder 1 , Christian Jakob 1
  1. Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

We will present results from a Self Organising Map (SOM) analysis of extreme wind events from the Bureau's 12km BARRA-R forecasting analysis product.  The results will show the types of synoptic events (typically frontal) that lead to the kinds of extreme wind speeds that can result in events such as the state-wide blackout in South Australia in September 2016.  We will attempt to address the question of whether these extreme winds events may become more likely in the future, and whether this may require changes to the standards to which high voltage transmission towers are built is we wish to maintain high levels of system security in a future world with many more distributed energy generation resources and links power lines.