Biblio

With the increasing number of catastrophic weather events and resulting disruption in the energy supply to essential loads, the distribution grid operators’ focus has shifted from reliability to resiliency against high impact, low-frequency events. Given the enhanced automation to enable the smarter grid, there are several assets/resources at the disposal of electric utilities to enhances resiliency. However, with a lack of comprehensive resilience tools for informed operational decisions and planning, utilities face a challenge in investing and prioritizing operational control actions for resiliency. The distribution system resilience is also highly dependent on system attributes, including network, control, generating resources, location of loads and resources, as well as the progression of an extreme event. In this work, we present a novel multi-stage resilience measure called the Anticipate-Withstand-Recover (AWR) metrics. The AWR metrics are based on integrating relevant ‘system characteristics based factors’, before, during, and after the extreme event. The developed methodology utilizes a pragmatic and flexible approach by adopting concepts from the national emergency preparedness paradigm, proactive and reactive controls of grid assets, graph theory with system and component constraints, and multi-criteria decision-making process. The proposed metrics are applied to provide decision support for a) the operational resilience and b) planning investments, and validated for a real system in Alaska during the entirety of the event progression.

Resilience is regarded nowadays as the ideal solution that can be envisaged by sociotechnical systems for coping with potential threats and crises. This being said, gaining and maintaining this ability is not always easy, given the multitude of risks driving the adverse and challenging events. This paper aims to propose a method consecrated to the assessment of risks directly affecting resilience. This work is conducted within the framework of risk assessment and resilience engineering approaches. A 5×5 matrix, dedicated to the identification and assessment of risk factors that constitute threats to the system resilience, has been elaborated. This matrix consists of two axes, namely, the impact on resilience metrics and the availability and effectiveness of resilience planning. Checklists serving to collect information about these two attributes are established and a case study is undertaken. In this paper, a new method for identifying and assessing risk factors menacing directly the resilience of a given system is presented. The analysis of these risks must be given priority to make the system more resilient to shocks.

This paper studies the modeling of cyber-physical dependencies observed within power grids and the effects of these intra-dependencies, on power grid resilience, which is evaluated quantitatively. A fundamental contribution of this paper is the description of the critically important role played by cyber-physical buffers as key components to limit the negative effect of intra-dependencies on power grids resilience. Although resilience issues in the electric power provision service could be limited thanks to the use of local energy storage devices as the realization of service buffers, minimal to no autonomy in data connectivity buffers make cyber vulnerabilities specially critical in terms of resilience. This paper also explains how these models can be used for improved power grids resilience planning considering internal cyber-physical interactions.