Impact of snow storms on distribution grids: e-distribuzione and RSE experimental stations

Year after year the climate change, due to global warming, is more and more tangible and brings an increasing of intensity and frequency of extreme meteorological events, such as snowstorms, windstorms, and heat waves. These events impact the operation of both distribution and transmission grids and thus affect a huge number of customers. All published projections on climate change show an increasing trend in the number and intensity of these events in the next years. Hence, these meteorological trends needs to be deeply investigated in order to reduce the impact that these extreme events will have on the continuity of the energy supply. In particular, the accretion of snow sleeves on overhead line conductors is the most impactful meteorological event. For this purpose, e-distribuzione, in collaboration with RSE, installed three experimental stations in order to acquire all necessary measures to characterize the ice sleeve phenomenon and tune properly the snow-sleeve accretion model developed by RSE for distribution grids.