IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2014 - 65

The Philippines is highly vulnerable to the impacts
of natural disasters, including the global phenomenon
of climate change.
Supertyphoon Yolanda (International Name:
Haiyan), Philippines, November 2013
the Philippines is an archipelago situated in the Pacific's
ring of fire with more than 7,000 islands and 36,000 km of
coastline. the Philippines is highly vulnerable to the impacts
of natural disasters, including the global phenomenon of
climate change. Based on the 2012 World Risk Report published by the United nations University institute of environment and human security (UnUehs), the Philippines is the
country with the third-highest disaster risk worldwide, with
a risk index of 27.98% of its population.

✔ the importance of improved forecasting, emergency

✔
✔

Impacts

in november 2013, the Philippines was hit by supertyphoon
Yolanda (international name: haiyan), the most powerful typhoon
of the year and the fourth-strongest storm ever recorded in the
world, with sustained winds of 315 mi/h and gusts up to 380 mi/h.
disturbing mostly the Visayas region (see figure 2), Yolanda left
the country with massive destruction of infrastructure and agriculture that affected about 16 million filipinos (about 17% of the
population). the estimated total cost of damages was at the level
of 36.7 billion pesos (about Us$0.9 billion), with an estimated
0.5% gross domestic product (gdP) impact at the country level.
Yolanda interrupted major food, water, telecommunications, and electric power supply services. the national grid
corporation of the Philippines (ngcP) announced that more
than 2,000 major distribution and transmission facilities were
damaged, with many locations sustaining 100% infrastructure
destruction. it took approximately two months to complete
repair and restoration activities for the major (bulk) electric
infrastructure; many remote locations are still without a sustainable power supply, however.
Lessons Learned

as a result of supertyphoon Yolanda, MeraLco (the largest distribution electric utility in the Philippines) and other
energy stakeholders initiated a discussion about a potential country-level strategy to include hardening across the
entire grid (new design and construction standards), smart
grid technology deployment in the context of an integrated
approach to operational and information technology across
all voltage levels, a "last mile" telecommunication platform,
advanced network automation, and microgrid solutions.

Conclusions and Recommendations
in light of the events described above, we outline the following conclusions and recommendations:
september/october 2014

preparedness strategies, and grid safety positioning
strategies should be recognized.
the development of microgrids to prevent total system
collapse and faster recovery of the grid is important.
the widespread use of cellphone communications to
aid in collecting data and obtaining status reports on
the numbers and timing of outages and restorations is
recommended.
further technology innovations for grid hardening
and resiliency are required.
high-priority r&d needs for very large-scale events
must be identified and pursued.

For Further Reading
n. c. abi-samra. (2013. nov.). one year later: superstorm
sandy underscores need for a resilient grid. IEEE Spectrum,
[online]. available: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/thesmarter-grid/one-year-later-superstorm-sandy-underscoresneed-for-a-resilient-grid
december 2013 north american ice storm. [online].
available: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/december_2013_north_
american_ice_storm
cyclone Phailin: Meteorogical history. [online]. available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cyclone_Phailin#Meteorological_
history

Acknowledgments
this article was written by the climate change technology
subcommittee of the ieee Power & energy society
energy development and Power generation committee,
with the key contributors being nicholas abi-samra,
James Mcconnach, subrata Mukhopadhyay, and Bartosz
wojszczyk.

Biographies
Nicholas Abi-Samra is with dnV gL, san diego, california.
James McConnach recently retired from castle hill
engineering services, Montreal, canada.
Subrata Mukhopadhyay is with gtB institute of technology, new delhi, india.
Bartosz Wojszczyk is with Manila electric company,
Manila, the Philippines.
p&e

ieee power & energy magazine

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/december_2013_north_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cyclone_Phailin#Meteorological_

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