December 4, 2013 NCEP Product Suite Usage in the Private Sector Brian Kolts Energy Delivery – Environmental 2013 Production Review National Weather Service

December 4, 2013

NCEP Product Suite Usage in the Private Sector

Brian KoltsEnergy Delivery – Environmental

2013 Production ReviewNational Weather Service NCEP

December 4, 20132013 NCEP Production Suite Review 2

Outline

Introduction to FirstEnergy

SREF and Hi-Res WRF Usage at FirstEnergy

Wish List

Questions and Answers


About FirstEnergy (FE)

Headquartered in Akron, Ohio

One of the largest investor-owned electricsystems in the U.S. based on6 million customers served

Nearly $47 billion in assets

$16 billion in annual revenues

Approximately 23,000 megawatts ofgenerating capacity

10 electric utility operating companies insix states

65,000-square-mile service area

20,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and approximately 281,000 miles of distribution lines Learn more by visiting www.firstenergycorp.com

Natural Gas

CoalNuclear

10%

6%

18%64%

2%Oil

Hydro/Wind

A BalancedFuel Mix


Need for Internal Meteorological Support

Assess the atmosphere’s impact on FirstEnergy

– Physical: Personnel (safety) and property (reliability/cash)

– Financial: Capitol strategies (resource management)

Assess FirstEnergy’s impact on the atmosphere

– FirstEnergy’s environmental footprint(air quality) present and future


Primary Weather Concerns - Impact Weather

High winds Ice Snow, especially wet snow on leaves Lightning Temperature extremes Flooding

Power Disruptions Caused By:

Address Safety, Reliability and Resource Management Issues:

Pre-staging of resources (crews,wires and poles)

Also extra staffing required to meetanticipated increase in customer call volume


How NCEP Products Support FirstEnergy

NCO – Production, NAWIPS software

EMC – Model runs (image), QPE gribs, archived data

SPC – Convective outlooks, storm reports, archived data

HPC – Model discussions, QPF gribs

NHC – Tropical System Guidance, archive data

CPC – Long range, climate index monitoring, archived data

SWPC – Space Weather Alerts

OPC – Not yet utilized

SREF, GFS, NAM Snowfall (f36) for March 24th 2013


SREF

GFS

• 30% SREF Mean

• 70% GFS

NAM

Observed snowfall (from LSR/PNS info)


We are now only using a 15 member SREF ensemble We are only using the em (ARW) control member – we have

excluded the remaining em members so as to not overweith the SREF towards the GFS

We have seen success with this through the convective season and we are just beginning to use this with winter events.


11/26 – 11/27 Snow Event SREF(15) Fhour48


9-12”


NAM 04 km (10-12”)

NAMARWE(10-12”)

NAMNMME(12-15”)

FE WRF4km(10-12”)

SREF(1 member), GEM, NAM, GFS, GCMC Blend Snow/Ice Accumulation


27 Nov 2013 Observed Snow Totals


November 17th Severe Event


SREF(15) Convective Wind Gust Potential

December45, 20132013 NCEP Production Suite Review 15

SREF(15) Maximum Non-Convective Gust Potential


Nov 17 2013 Max Recorded Wind Speeds


June 12th Derecho



NAMARWE

NAMNMME

FE WRF

Obs Radar

1000m Synthetic Reflectivity Forecast at fhours 36/42

Summary/Wish List We would like to thank EMC for all of your products and hard

work, and for allowing FirstEnergy to participiate in this review.

We would like to thank Geoff Manikin for conducting the weekly MEG meetings – we have found these extremely valuable.

While we use nearly all EMC products, we are especially heavy users of SREF and the Hi-Res WRF runs.

We are looking for the forthcoming updates to the SREF. We wish we had been able to access the current parallel members.

We would like to see Rime Factor available in all models.

We look forward to opportunities to work with NOAA in the future.

December4, 20132013 NCEP Production Suite Review 20

December 4, 2013

2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

21

Peter Manousos [email protected] 761 4484

Brian [email protected] 384 5474


SREF Application – Winter Precipitation

Simple approach – multiply three hour melted QPF by precip type (binary flag at every fhr for snow, rain, sleet and freezing rain)

Three hour components summed (GEMPAK) to create the following for each precip type (every cycle)

– Three hour totals

– “Model run” totals

– Running 24 hour totals

Will improve when one hour SREF output utilized

Examples of wind and snow loops will follow the verification plots


SREF Application – Wind (Non-Convective)

Momentum Transfer Method (BUFKIT) approach applied to each SREF member

“Height of gust layer” found when(working from surface upward) thelapse rate becomes greater than70% of that for a standardatmosphere (~-4.5 deg /km too stableto mix beyond this threshold)

Within this layer two parameters arecalculated:

– “Typical gust” (mean of the wind speedin the gust layer)

– “Max gust” (max wind speed in thegust layer)

Assessed from surface to 700mb for every member at every grid point for every forecast hour (GEMPAK) and every cycle

Very powerful tool for pre-storm planning


Meteorology and Energy/Air Quality Policy

Air quality standards have tightenedwhile power demand increases

Modeling used to determinebest path forward

EPA regulatory and regionalmodels driven by meteorology

Documents

December 4, 2013 NCEP Product Suite Usage in the Private Sector Brian Kolts Energy Delivery – Environmental 2013 Production Review National Weather Service