Data for distribution grid resilience research

This repo contains data needed for the code repository: https://github.com/wangzhecheng/vulnerability. <br> This data is for supporting the research on distribution grid resilience to wildfires, led by Stanford Sustainable Systems Lab, with the aim to make electricity infrastructure more affordable, equitable, and resilient to climate-induced extreme events. <br> Abstract: Climate-induced extreme weather conditions make electricity infrastructure more vulnerable. They increase the risk of powerline-ignited wildfires which can, in turn, jeopardize electric power delivery. Leveraging machine learning, here we show that lower-income communities in California not only have lower fractions of power distribution lines undergrounded, but overhead lines and poles in their neighborhoods are also more vulnerable to wildfires. Should they bear the cost of undergrounding fire-prone lines themselves, they would have to pay a disproportionately higher cost per household. Here we propose a cost allocation scheme with an income threshold below which the cost is borne by utility-wide ratepayers and above which the cost is borne locally. This scheme can not only minimize the average of undergrounding costs per household as a share of income, but also homogenize such cost-income ratios across communities. Our research demonstrates the opportunity to appropriately integrate existing policies to make electricity infrastructure affordable, equitable, and reliable amidst climate change.