Optimal Life-Cycle Resilience Enhancement of Aging Power Distribution Systems: A MINLP-Based Preventive Maintenance Planning

Abstract

Power distribution systems in the US are commonly supported by wood utility poles. These assets require regular maintenance to enhance the reliability of power delivery to support many dependent functions of the society. Limitations in budget, however, warrant efficient allocation of limited resources based on optimal preventive maintenance plans. A few studies have developed risk-based metrics to support risk-informed decision making in preventive maintenance planning for power distribution systems. However, integration of risk-based metrics and optimization for enhancing the life-cycle resilience of distribution systems has not been explored. To address this gap, this paper proposes a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model to maximize the life-cycle resilience of aging power distribution systems subject to multi-occurrences of hurricane events using an optimal risk-based maintenance planning. For this purpose, a risk-based index called the Expected Outages is proposed and integrated into the optimization problem to minimize the total expected number of power outages in the entire planning horizon. Various uncertainties in the performance of poles under stochastic occurrences of hazards are taken into account through advanced fragility models and an efficient recursive formulation that models the uncertainty of precedent pole failures. The proposed approach is applied to a large, realistic power distribution system for long-term maintenance planning given a total budget limit and different levels of periodic budget constraints. The resulting optimization problems are solved through the branch and bound algorithm. Results indicate that applying the presented methodology leads to a significant enhancement of the life-cycle resilience of distribution systems compared to the commonly implemented strength-based maintenance strategy set by National Electric Safety Code.

Prevention and Survivability for Power Distribution Resilience: A Multi-Criteria Renewables Expansion Model

“…To account for varying levels of potential disruptions, for the studied 13-node network in Figure 6, we choose three representative damaging events corresponding to catastrophic, disruptive, and low disruptive scenarios respectively. More specifically, we consider three arbitrary scenarios under different levels of disruptions: s 1 = {(1, 2), (3,4), (1,5), (5, 6), (1, 9), (1, 11)} has six links broken with probability p 1 = 0.1; s 2 = {(1, 2), (1,5), (6,7), (1, 11)} has four links broken with probability p 2 = 0.3; and s 3 = {(1, 5), (1, 9)} has two links broken with probability p 3 = 0.6. Note a nodal pair in s k for k = 1, 2, and 3 represents a particular link.…”

“…At present physical hardening and distributed generation (DG) are the two primary approaches to enhancing the resilience of distribution grid. Adding redundant overhead lines and backup generation, fortifying poles, trimming vegetation, and preventive maintenance all fall into the hardening category [1]- [3]. The second approach for resilience attainment is to design and implement active distribution grid in which microgrid systems or distributed energy resources (DER), such as wind turbine, photovoltaic system, and battery energy storage, can operate in island mode to power the critical load post the disaster attacks [4], [5].…”

Designing Heavy-Duty Vehicles’ Four-Parameter Driving Cycles to Best Represent Engine Distribution Consistency

“…First, engine transient test cycles will be used directly to design engine steady-state cycles, and the analysis related to fuel consumption and emissions will supplement the verification of this study. Additionally, the study of optimally predictable strategy [23] to improve vehicle performance can be considered as research direction. Second, other parameter constraints will be increased to improve the design efficiency, which could refer to the real-time energy consumption calculation model [24] based on the VA distribution.…”

Novel trends in resilience assessment of a distribution system using synchrophasor application: A literature review

“…Linear programming optimization is suggested for resilience driven energy storage system planning 10 . For wind powered system, an ordered curtailment strategy ensures grid resilience during cyclone Typhoon 11 . Many a time, lack of information such as uncertain HILF characteristics make it difficult to evaluate distribution system resilience 12 .…”