| Resource Type | Tool fact sheet |
| Author / Source | Idaho National Laboratory (INL) |
| Publication Date | 2025 (tool introduced January 2023) |
| Location | United States |
| Initiative Type | Technology, Program |
| Project Complexity | Advanced |
| Recommended For | Board, Staff |
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Why This Matters for Rural Electric Co-ops
Major storms are a costly reliability threat many co-ops face, and how fast power comes back determines the human and economic toll. Storm-DEPART, developed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), predicts where a hurricane or ice storm will do the most damage and what crews and materials will be needed, so a utility can pre-stage resources and prioritize community lifelines such as healthcare, drinking water, and emergency services. It directly targets two expensive failure modes: slow restoration and the over-deployment of mutual-aid crews.
Starting in 2025, Storm-DEPART is available through a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) damage-mitigation technical assistance program, executed by INL, so a co-op could explore it through that pathway rather than building modeling in-house. One caveat, it has so far been used by Entergy (a three-million-customer utility), so a smaller co-op should assess how the tool and its data scales down.
Key Takeaways
| › | Storm-DEPART predicts hurricane and ice-storm damage to distribution, transmission, and generation. It then estimates the crews, materials, and days needed for restoration. |
| › | It models against each utility's own response configuration and asset data, so prediction quality depends heavily on how complete that data is. |
| › | Since 2025 it is offered as a DOE technical assistance capability executed by INL, a possible access route for co-ops. |
| › | Beyond live response, it can model hypothetical storm scenarios to inform resilience investments and incident-response plans. |
Implementation Considerations
- Regulatory or Governance Considerations: Access runs through a DOE damage-mitigation technical assistance program executed by INL, so a co-op would engage INL rather than license a commercial product.
- Staffing or Technology Requirements: Accuracy depends on detailed, current asset and response-configuration data (poles, lines, transformers, crew and material profiles). Co-ops with thinner data or limited geographic information systems may see weaker output and need support.
- Time-Sensitive Information: The 2025 fact sheet places Storm-DEPART under DOE's Grid Deployment Office, but the grid resilience assistance request pathway now sits under DOE's Office of Electricity. Confirm the tool's current home and availability with INL or DOE before relying on it.
Notable Examples
- Idaho National Laboratory: Developed Storm-DEPART.
- Entergy: Louisiana-based utility serving three million customers that co-developed the tool and used it for Hurricanes Beryl and Francine and several winter ice events.
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): Since 2025, offers Storm-DEPART to utilities as a technical assistance capability.
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
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