WEBINAR

The Rising Cost of Blackouts: National Lab Data

Discover the rising economic toll of U.S. power outages and how cutting-edge data tools are helping planners drive smarter investments in grid resilience.
September 11, 2025
3:00 PM UTC
1 hour

September 11, 2025 

11:00 AM ET / 10:00 AM CT / 8:00 AM PT / 4:00 PM GMT 

Duration: 1 hour 

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Summary

In this webinar, attendees will gain valuable insights into the significant economic implications of power outages in the United States. Leveraging data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the upgraded Interruption Cost Estimate Calculator (ICE 2.0) from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), we will explore the costs associated with major power outages over the past seven years.

Participants will learn about a disaggregated, event-based analytical approach that provides county-level cost estimates and highlights trends in the economic impact of power failures.

Key topics will include:

  • The substantial annual financial burden of power outages on customers, which has escalated dramatically in recent years.
  • A detailed examination of the 2024 outbreak of significant outages, influenced by a catastrophic hurricane season, and its staggering costs.
  • How state and utility planners can utilize event-level cost estimates to enhance decision-making for grid reliability and resilience investments.
  • Insights into the integration of outage cost data into ORNL’s TASTI-GRID initiative, designed to optimize planning for grid improvements.

Join us to better understand how these findings can inform more effective resource allocation to enhance grid resilience across the nation.

Speaker

Narayan Bhusal

Narayan Bhusal

Research Scientist

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Narayan Bhusal is a Research Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He specializes in power systems, data science, and artificial intelligence.
Supriya Chinthavali

Supriya Chinthavali

Group Leader | Critical Infrastructure Resilience Group

ORNL

Supriya Chinthavali is the Group Leader for the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Group at ORNL, where she drives high-impact projects on smart grid situational awareness, outage analytics, and infrastructure interdependency modeling. As data lead for DOE’s EAGLE‑I real‑time energy situational awareness tool and project manager for the outage‑tracking ODIN initiative, she pioneers tools that boost energy resilience during extreme events.
Josh Schellenberg

Josh Schellenberg

Principal and COO

H&S Insights

Josh Schellenberg is Principal and COO of H&S Insights. With over 16 years of consulting and analytics experience in the electric utility industry, Josh supports the development of rigorous plans and cost-effectiveness analyses that provide clear insight into investment options and enable sound decision-making.
Giri Iyer

Giri Iyer

Sr Program Manager

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Giri brings 30+ years of industry experience in Medical Imaging and informatics, high Performance Computing and Energy/Electrical Grid to ORNL. He is a Sr Program Manager in the Critical Infrastructure Resilience team and is (co)-principal investigator on a couple of key projects in grid resilience as a service and data center load modeling.
Moderator: Nikki Chandler

Moderator: Nikki Chandler

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Nikki Chandler is Group Editorial Director of the EndeavorB2B Energy group that includes T&D World, EnergyTech and Microgrid Knowledge media brands.