Cl. Dempsey et al., DEVELOPING ADVANCED WEATHER TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE POWER INDUSTRY, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 79(6), 1998, pp. 1019-1035
The National Severe Storms Laboratory, the Salt River Project (SRP), a
nd the Electric Power Research Institute have been involved in a multi
year tailored collaboration (TC) research project. The project was joi
ntly supported by all three agencies and had the goal of exploring pot
ential benefits that the power industry could realize by incorporating
new weather information, resulting from the National Weather Service'
s modernization program, into their operational decision-making proces
s. The SRP, which is one of the nation's largest public utilities and
located in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, served as a test bed
for a variety of experimental techniques that could easily be emulate
d in the future. Activities during this TC were focused upon weather-r
elated problems experienced during the summer monsoon months when thun
derstorms can threaten or impact SRP's operations on a daily basis. We
ather information and special forecasts were introduced to and shared
with several of SRP's operational divisions through the course of this
TC; their degree of utilization and subsequent improvements to SRP's
operational efficiency are summarized in this paper.