Resilient microgrid system design for disaster impact mitigation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Power system failures due to extreme weather events can have devastating consequences. Although microgrids are increasingly adopted as a potential solution to main grid failure, they face similar disruption risks. Hence, it is crucial to limit the performance degradation from disruption events, so that restoration time is minimized. To achieve this goal, this paper introduces the notion of during-event resilience, and proposes a framework to generate resilient designs of distributed energy sources to maximize the resilience of micro-grids. The framework accounts for uncertainties from system failure scenarios, and renewable energy availability. A two-level optimization is proposed. The lower-level optimizes the power flow subject to power balance constraints, to maximize a cost-based resilience metric. The upper-level optimization maximizes the expected resilience while accounting for uncertainty. Using the IEEE 33 node test feeder power grid system, we show how the proposed framework can generate resilient designs in real-world settings.