Focus on safeguarding power supply 

On 23 September 2003 east Denmark blacked out. For several hours, 2.4 million Danes had no electricity during the most serious power failure in that part of the country ever.

Since then, safeguarding power supply has been high on the political agenda. Spearheaded by the Danish Energy Authority, a group of public utility companies have decided to investigate whether the supply situation in Denmark is satisfactory.

The costs of a power failure

As part of that investigation, COWI is assisting the Danish Energy Authority to estimate the welfare-economic costs of power failures.
The aim is to develop a model to calculate the costs of various types of power failures, i.e. power failures at various times, of varying duration and in various geographical areas.

"One of the purposes of the study is to facilitate assessments of profitability for society as a whole of investments to increase the stability of power supply. These investments may for example include a cable over the Great Belt or an increase of the capacity of the distribution system. When the costs of a power failure are known, it is possible to assess whether it is worthwhile investing in avoiding them", explains project manager Mads Paabøl Jensen.

The model will also enable an assessment of how much the power cut in September 2003 cost Danish society.

Published: 23.09.2004
By: Janne Toft Jensen, jaje@cowi.dk