Fast restoration of microgrids using online evaluation metrics considering severe windstorms

Abstract

This paper presents a new online scheme for estimating critical contingencies caused by extreme windstorms aiming at improving the microgrid (MG) resiliency. The proposed scheme benefits from an online and non-model-based index by which the fragility metrics of MGs and the loads are evaluated at each time moving window. Also, four indices based on dynamic evaluation of the network are proposed which two indices correspond to the failure period and the two other are related to the network recovery period. By evaluation of these indices, correction actions aiming at improving the resilience of MG are provided. Finally, the proposed method is assessed in the case of different generation locations and the outage probability of system components. The results evidence that the proposed scheme shows a 15% reduction in the total load failure index and a 7% reduction in the critical load failure index if compared to the base case. It also shows a 23% improvement in the total load recovery in the presence of severe storms.