The 9 August Blackout Event, and open questions in power system reliability analysis

The 9 August blackout event, and open questions in power system reliability analysis

This talk will begin with a summary of the timeline of the 9 August blackout event in Great Britain, and its specific causes. It will then use this as a basis to illustrate needs for mathematical science-related research in energy systems reliability, with particular emphasis on modelling common cause events including those related to weather.

The talk will conclude with discussion of challenges in knowledge transfer from research to industrial and government practice, including insights from the Big Mathematics Initiative (successor activity to the Bond Review of knowledge exchange in the mathematical sciences).

Speaker

Dr Chris Dent is Chancellor’s Fellow and Reader in Industrial Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, and a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. Previously he worked in energy systems modelling at Durham University from 2009-16.

His main interests lie in electricity security of supply and in wider issues of good practice in government modelling. He also has a much broader interest in developing collaboration between the mathematical sciences and the broad energy and infrastructure research communities. He is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Operational Research Society, and Senior Member of the IEEE.