⚡ Assessing the Vulnerability and Risks of Slovenia’s High-Voltage Network

For ELES, the combined transmission and distribution system operator of the Republic of Slovenia, we prepared a vulnerability and risk assessment of the high-voltage network (≥110 kV) related to extreme weather and natural hazards, including:

🧊 Ice storms

❄️ Snow

💨 Strong winds

⛈️ Storms and lightning strikes

🌊 Floods

🌡️ High temperatures

🔥 Wildfires

🏔️ Landslides

🌍 Earthquakes

🔎 The study focused on the analysis and mapping of these hazards across Slovenia at high spatial resolution, using a wide range of spatial and other datasets from numerous sources, including ARSO, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), EIMV (SCALAR), DRSV, GeoZS, GIS, ZGS, DARS, and others.

🧊❄️ As part of the study, we developed a model for simulating ice thickness on conductors during past events and applied a conductor loading model caused by wet snow accumulation, enabling more detailed analyses at the local level.

For high-voltage transmission lines and substations (RTP), we prepared vulnerability and risk maps for the analysed weather and natural hazards.

📊 Key findings:

• Ice storms are the most significant vulnerability factor, causing very high vulnerability on 8.1% (275 km) of transmission lines.

• Landslides follow, causing high vulnerability on 15.3% (520 km) of transmission lines.

• Snow contributes to high vulnerability on 3.4% (115 km) of transmission lines.

  
  

For substations (RTP), the results differ slightly:

• Wildfires and floods cause very high vulnerability.

• High vulnerability is also associated with earthquakes, ice storms, and landslides.

⚡ In addition to vulnerability, the risk assessment also considered:

• The importance of individual transmission line sections and substations (RTP)

• The duration of network outages, based on the analysis of past failure events

🌍 For selected hazards, we also assessed the impacts of climate change on future risks up to the end of the century under the RCP8.5 scenario.

⚙️ The high-resolution results represent an important step towards a better understanding of the spatial distribution of risks and more effective planning of adaptation measures to increase the resilience of the electricity system.