Resilience assessment and planning in power distribution systems:Past and future considerations

Over the past decade, extreme weather events have significantly increased worldwide, leading to widespread power outages and blackouts. As these threats continue to challenge power distribution systems, the importance of mitigating the impacts of extreme weather events has become paramount. Consequently, resilience has become crucial for designing and operating power distribution systems. This work comprehensively explores the current landscape of resilience evaluation and metrics within the power distribution system domain, reviewing existing methods and identifying key attributes that define effective resilience metrics. The challenges encountered during the formulation, development, and calculation of these metrics are also addressed. Additionally, this review acknowledges the intricate interdependencies between power distribution systems and critical infrastructures, including information and communication technology, transportation, water distribution, and natural gas networks. It is important to understand these interdependencies and their impact on power distribution system resilience. Moreover, this work provides an in-depth analysis of existing research on planning solutions to enhance distribution system resilience and support power distribution system operators and planners in developing effective mitigation strategies. These strategies are crucial for minimizing the adverse impacts of extreme weather events and fostering overall resilience within power distribution systems.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, submitted for review to Renewable and Sustainable Energy Review

Resilience-oriented design and proactive preparedness of electrical distribution system

Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and ice storms, pose a top threat to power distribution systems as their frequency and severity increase over time. Recent severe power outages caused by extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, have highlighted the importance and urgency to enhance the resilience of electric power distribution systems. The goal of enhancing the resilience of distribution systems against extreme weather events can be fulfilled through upgrading and operating measures. This work focuses on investigating the impacts of upgrading measures and preventive operational measures on distribution system resilience. The objective of this dissertation is to develop a multi-timescale optimization framework to provide some actionable resilience-enhancing strategies for utility companies to harden/upgrade power distribution systems in the long-term and do proactive preparation management in the short-term. In the long-term resilience-oriented design (ROD) of distribution system, the main challenges are i) modeling the spatio-temporal correlation among ROD decisions and uncertainties, ii) capturing the entire failure-recovery-cost process, and iii) solving the resultant large-scale mixed-integer stochastic problem efficiently. To deal with these challenges, we propose a hybrid stochastic process with a deterministic casual structure to model the spatio-temporal correlations of uncertainties. A new two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear program (MILP) is formulated to capture the impacts of ROD decisions and uncertainties on system responses to extreme weather events. The objective is to minimize the ROD investment cost in the first stage and the expected costs of loss of load, DG operation, and damage repairs in the second stage. A dual decomposition (DD) algorithm with branch-and-bound is developed to solve the proposed model with binary variables in both stages. Case studies on the IEEE 123-bus test feeder have shown the proposed approach can improve the system resilience at minimum costs. For an upcoming extreme weather event, we develop a pre-event proactive energy management and preparation strategy such that flexible resources can be prepared in advance. In order to explicitly materialize the trade-off between the pre-event resource allocation cost and the damage loss risk associated with an event, the strategy is modeled a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear programming (SMILP) and Conditional Value at-Risk (CVaR). The progressive algorithm is used to solve the proposed model and obtain the optimal proactive energy management and preparation strategy. Numerical studies on the modified IEEE 123-bus test feeder show the effectiveness of the proposed approach to improve the system resilience at different risk levels

Humanitarian logistics optimization models: An investigation of decision-maker involvement and directions to promote implementation

Reports of successful implementation of humanitarian optimization models in the field are scarce. Incorporating real conditions and the perspective of decision-makers in the analysis is crucial to enhance the practical value and managerial implications. Although it is known that implementation can be hindered by the lack of practitioner input in the structure of the model, its priorities, and the practicality of solution times, the way these aspects have been introduced in humanitarian optimization models has not been investigated. This study looks at the way research has involved practitioners in different aspects of the design of optimization models to promote implementation. It investigates the aspects affecting the implementation of the models and opportunities to guide future optimization contributions. The article introduces a systematic literature review of 105 articles to answer the research questions. The results are contrasted with a multi-criteria decision analysis using responses from Mexican practitioners. The study found that only 10% of the articles involved practitioners for modelling decisions, which was confirmed by a major gap between the objectives used in the literature and the priorities of Mexican practitioners. In terms of swift decision-making, fewer than 22% of the articles surveyed introduced new solution methods to deliver results in a sensible time. The study also identified very limited inclusion of environmental concerns in the objective functions even though these are a priority in the global agenda. These findings are discussed to propose research directions and suggest best practices for future contributions to promote the implementation of humanitarian logistics models