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Research Outline

Prepared for Michael K. | Delivered August 27, 2020

Median Power Outage US

Goals

To find the median or the mode power outage duration in the United States in minutes. This would not include extraordinary events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. The information will be used to guide a product decision for a new product development. Ideally to find the information for each state.

Early Findings

Calculation or Median Power Outages

  • In order to calculate the median power outage duration in the US, discarding major weather or natural events, we need to gather information and duration of all the power outages that happened in the first half of 2020.
  • This is available in a report provided by the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, & Emergency Responce. (CESER)
  • The information of the report has been transfered to a shared document. 
  • Between January and June 2020, there have been a total of 157 outages in the US. 
  • Exluding severe weather issues and natural disasters, there remains 100 power outages. 
  • If we filter by taking out events when start or end of outage are unknown, there are 88 events left. 
  • To find the median for these power outages, it is necessary to calculate the duration of all those events (Column F), and rank them from smallest to largest.

  • After initial research, we propose to provide the Median Power Outage duration in the US for 2020, excluding severe weather and natural events, as well as outages that last more then hours. We will also provide this information by State and present it in a share document.