The Austrian Alpine region is one of the regions with the highest lightning activity in Europe.

At the Institute of High Voltage Engineering and System Performance of Graz University of Technology, several research topics have been investigated  in the last 15 years, in which lightning phenomena are investigated in cooperation with the Austrian transmission system operator, the lightning location system operator ALDIS and the meteorological service ZAMG.

Research focuses on weather developments and lightning activities, strong wind and extreme weather events in the Alpine region in relation to the ongoing climate changes. Related to this is the investigation of the security of supply as well as the estimation of the risk of outages and automated support of the grid operation. Effects of environmental influences due to meteorological changes on the high-voltage transmission system and grid operation are current topics. In the research project, analyses of individual faults with retrospective fault analysis, outage times and resilience as well as the influence of protection and control technology up to system reliability are investigated.

The project was launched in October 2020 and will be ongoing until September 2025.