Toward equitable grid resilience: operationalizing climate adaptation strategies to mitigate flooding impacts

Abstract

Disadvantaged communities are disproportionately affected by flooding, exacerbated by climate change. This paper presents a novel framework for incorporating environmental justice into climate adaptation planning of power grids against flooding. A new energy equity metric is introduced with the vision that addressing environmental justice warrants prioritizing disadvantaged communities that have lower risk thresholds. The framework is applied to a levee-protected IEEE standard test system in northern California. The grid performance disturbed due to flooded substations is investigated under current and future climate. The mathematical model of the framework is structured as a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer programming model. This model aims to minimize the equity gap in grid resilience (EGGR) between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged communities while enhancing the system resilience by reducing the risk of power outages due to flooding. The results show that climate change undermines grid resilience, with disproportionally worse impacts on disadvantaged communities. A significant EGGR is observed that worsens under a changing climate. For adaptation, the optimal placement of distributed energy resources is determined by maximizing the grid resilience to flooding while minimizing EGGR. The proposed framework can equip decision-makers with a robust tool for operationalizing equitable climate adaptation strategies for power grids.