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An Outage Occurrence? Based On The Expected Effect Of Weather, Demographics, And Socioeconomic Features

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Modeling Overview The models developed for this research focused on addressing the following question: What is the likelihood of an outage occurrence? Based on the expected effect of weather, demographics, and socioeconomic features on outages, some hypotheses to be tested are as follows: • Hypothesis #1 - Weather has an influence on power outages. Snow, rain, wind and temperature have an impactful effect on underground cables, overhead lines, or complete electrical infrastructure that can cause electrical grids to fail. Weather also effects consumer demand, which drives changes on the electrical grid. • Hypothesis #2 - Income changes will increase/decrease energy consumption and power outages. Changes in income have an effect on the commercial and residential developments in the area. The changes affect the max load capabilities of the electrical grid. Income changes have a hierarchy of purchases. For example, if a group has a change of income that now allows air conditioner purchases, the electrical load will change quickly. • Hypothesis #3 - Ethnicity of a population has an influence on power outages. Certain ethnicities have generalized electrical usage. Some groups do not use air conditioners, but others leave the windows open into the winter. That type of demographic features may be impactful explanatory variables to help predict outages. The objective of this Capstone is to utilize data mining procedures and the business analytica framework learned throughout

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