Climatological changes and new applications for system grid operators

The Alpine region has so far been over-proportionally affected by climate change. However, these changes vary regionally and seasonally, impacting both society and environment differently. Due to the decades-long use of overhead transmission lines, changing climatic conditions can cause new challenges. In particular, the effects of continuous climatic changes can lead to conditions that were not considered during the planning and construction of current overhead lines decades ago. Therefore, the climate risk management project Climate Check has been initiated by Austrian Power Grid AG (APG) in close collaboration with GeoSphere Austria. The main objective is to investigate the effects of environmental influences due to meteorological changes on high-voltage power systems and the impact on grid operation. Since climatological changes may also affect APG in terms of lightning frequency, a complementary project “Lightning Research 2025” is conducted at Graz University of Technology. The project investigates lightning discharges, accompanying thunderstorms, and their influences on high-voltage systems and the grid operation. In this context, the current state of the research regarding future frequency of severe thunderstorms and lightning events is discussed. In order to analyze changes the detections of lightning discharges determined with the Austrian lightning location system ALDIS during the last 10 years (2013-2022) were considered. Based on current climate long term forecasts, an overview of the expected changes in climate in Austria will be given. Within this framework, different model runs are calculated and compared or further processed in order to create the parameters for a scenario. The long-term goal is to incorporate the project results into future planning and projects. In detail, local precipitation and resulting new patterns of extreme weather events are assessed. The calculated long-term forecasts cover the periods of rigorous climate action to scenarios with no climate action in the near future (2021-2050) as well as in the distant future (2071-2100), respectively. Results show that precipitation days are less likely during summer and more likely in winter. The precipitation intensity increases throughout the year starting from +3% in the near future up to +16% in the distant future. The daily maximum precipitation amount rises by a minimum of +9% in the near future up to +29% in the distant future. Finally, results show more persistent patterns in the future.