NCEP Product Suite Usage in the Private Sector

1. NCEP Product Suite Usage in the Private Sector Brian KoltsEnergy Delivery – Environmental 2013 Production Review National Weather Service NCEP

2. Outline • Introduction to FirstEnergy • SREF and Hi-Res WRF Usage at FirstEnergy • Wish List • Questions and Answers 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

3. About FirstEnergy (FE) • Headquartered in Akron, Ohio • One of the largest investor-owned electricsystems in the U.S. based on6 million customers served • Nearly $47 billion in assets • $16 billion in annual revenues • Approximately 23,000 megawatts ofgenerating capacity • 10 electric utility operating companies insix states • 65,000-square-mile service area • 20,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and approximately 281,000 miles of distribution lines Oil Hydro/Wind 2% Natural Gas 10% 6% A BalancedFuel Mix Nuclear Coal 18% 64% Learn more by visiting www.firstenergycorp.com 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

4. Need for Internal Meteorological Support • Assess the atmosphere’s impact on FirstEnergy • Physical: Personnel (safety) and property (reliability/cash) • Financial: Capitol strategies (resource management) • Assess FirstEnergy’s impact on the atmosphere • FirstEnergy’s environmental footprint(air quality) present and future 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

5. Primary Weather Concerns - Impact Weather Power Disruptions Caused By: • High winds • Ice • Snow, especially wet snow on leaves • Lightning • Temperature extremes • Flooding Address Safety, Reliability and Resource Management Issues: • Pre-staging of resources (crews,wires and poles) • Also extra staffing required to meetanticipated increase in customer call volume 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

6. How NCEP Products Support FirstEnergy • NCO – Production, NAWIPS software • EMC – Model runs (image), QPE gribs, archived data • SPC – Convective outlooks, storm reports, archived data • HPC – Model discussions, QPF gribs • NHC – Tropical System Guidance, archive data • CPC – Long range, climate index monitoring, archived data • SWPC – Space Weather Alerts • OPC – Not yet utilized 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

7. SREF, GFS, NAM Snowfall (f36) for March 24th 2013 • 30% SREF Mean • 70% GFS SREF NAM GFS 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

8. Observed snowfall (from LSR/PNS info) 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

9. We are now only using a 15 member SREF ensemble 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review We are only using the em (ARW) control member – we have excluded the remaining em members so as to not overweith the SREF towards the GFS We have seen success with this through the convective season and we are just beginning to use this with winter events.

10. 11/26 – 11/27 Snow Event SREF(15) Fhour48 9-12” 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

11. NAM 04 km (10-12”) NAM ARWE (10-12”) NAM NMME (12-15”) FE WRF 4km (10-12”) 2012 NCEP Production Suite Review

12. SREF(1 member), GEM, NAM, GFS, GCMC Blend Snow/Ice Accumulation 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

13. 27 Nov 2013 Observed Snow Totals 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

14. November 17th Severe Event 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

15. SREF(15) Convective Wind Gust Potential 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

16. SREF(15) Maximum Non-Convective Gust Potential 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

17. Nov 17 2013 Max Recorded Wind Speeds 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

18. June 12th Derecho 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

19. 1000m Synthetic Reflectivity Forecast at fhours 36/42 NAM ARWE NAM NMME FE WRF Obs Radar 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

20. Summary/Wish List 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review We would like to thank EMC for all of your products and hard work, and for allowing FirstEnergy to participiate in this review. We would like to thank Geoff Manikin for conducting the weekly MEG meetings – we have found these extremely valuable. While we use nearly all EMC products, we are especially heavy users of SREF and the Hi-Res WRF runs. We are looking for the forthcoming updates to the SREF. We wish we had been able to access the current parallel members. We would like to see Rime Factor available in all models. We look forward to opportunities to work with NOAA in the future.

21. Questions & Answers Brian Koltsbkolts@firstenergycorp.com330 384 5474 Peter Manousospmanousos@firstenergycorp.com330 761 4484 2013 NCEP Production Suite Review

22. SREF Application – Winter Precipitation • Simple approach – multiply three hour melted QPF by precip type (binary flag at every fhr for snow, rain, sleet and freezing rain) • Three hour components summed (GEMPAK) to create the following for each precip type (every cycle) • Three hour totals • “Model run” totals • Running 24 hour totals • Will improve when one hour SREF output utilized • Examples of wind and snow loops will follow the verification plots 2012 NCEP Production Suite Review

23. SREF Application – Wind (Non-Convective) • Momentum Transfer Method (BUFKIT) approach applied to each SREF member • “Height of gust layer” found when(working from surface upward) thelapse rate becomes greater than70% of that for a standardatmosphere (~-4.5 deg /km too stableto mix beyond this threshold) • Within this layer two parameters arecalculated: • “Typical gust” (mean of the wind speedin the gust layer) • “Max gust” (max wind speed in thegust layer) • Assessed from surface to 700mb for every member at every grid point for every forecast hour (GEMPAK) and every cycle • Very powerful tool for pre-storm planning 2012 NCEP Production Suite Review

24. Meteorology and Energy/Air Quality Policy • Air quality standards have tightenedwhile power demand increases • Modeling used to determinebest path forward • EPA regulatory and regionalmodels driven by meteorology 2012 NCEP Production Suite Review