CAREER: Enabling Operational Resilience in Decentralized Electric Power Distribution Systems

由于自然灾害造成的电力系统中断的惊人成本，估计每年180 - 330亿美元，以及由于关键服务的长期损失而对人身安全和安保造成的不利影响，要求提高电网对极端天气事件的弹性。对于老化的中压和低压配电系统来说，恢复能力的需求尤为重要，据估计，该系统占停电的90%。该CAREER项目提出了一种变革性的方法，通过利用最近的智能电网进步来管理中断并提高配电系统的运营弹性。拟议的创新增加了使用分布式能源（DER）和增强的配电自动化能力进行孤岛形成和自下而上恢复所需的灵活性，从而可以在自然灾害期间更快地恢复关键服务。该项目的成功完成将：1）使用自动化和分布式弹性解决方案改善公共安全并降低自然灾害对美国经济的成本，2）帮助制定新标准，以挖掘DER渗透率不断增长的潜力，以提高电网弹性，以及3）鼓励DER集成，并通过为DER技术制定新的价值主张来帮助减少美国的碳足迹。这一努力的模型和结果可能会扩展到其他关键基础设施。该项目的一个同样重要的组成部分侧重于解决对熟练，跨学科和包容性劳动力的迫切需求，以支持未来的配电网与一个良好的综合教育计划的帮助。这是通过创新的课堂和在线课程配电系统，介绍本科生和代表性不足的少数民族学生具有挑战性的跨学科问题，并有针对性地推广到高中学生。 该CAREER项目的总体目标是实现新兴配电网的全部潜力，通过基础设施和运营的分散化来管理很少发生的高影响低概率（HILP）事件中断。其核心思想是，通过创新，利用分布式应急反应器进行孤岛式运作，并允许在灾害情况下进行分布式决策，从而增强抗灾能力。项目目标通过以下方式实现：（1）战略资源规划，以提高使用DER恢复关键服务的能力;（2）DER驱动的服务恢复分布式决策，以便在灾难期间更快地恢复服务;（3）描述与DER通电岛屿及其设计参数的小信号稳定性有关的图论和代数条件;这些条件用于指导服务恢复过程，使得恢复的岛不仅在操作上可行而且稳定。我们方法的新奇源于紧密交织的规划和运营框架，该框架优先考虑使用DER，以实现在中断期间运营配电网的新的变革性方式。理论上的贡献，预计对HILP事件的表征对弹性和风险规避规划方法;分布式优化方法的组合，非凸，大规模的问题，服务恢复;网络级属性的分析表征有损DER通电岛，涉及其小信号稳定性;以及结构特性和设计参数对低-该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The staggering cost of power system outages due to natural disasters, an estimated $18-33 billion per year, and its adverse effects on personal safety and security due to extended loss of critical services call for improving resilience in the electric power grid to extreme weather events. The need for resilience is particularly critical for the aging mid- and low-voltage power distribution systems, responsible for an estimated 90% of the outages. This CAREER project proposes a transformative approach to manage disruptions and improve the operational resilience of the distribution systems by leveraging upon the recent smart grid advances. The proposed innovations add the required flexibility for island formation and bottom-up restoration using distributed energy resources (DERs) and enhanced distribution automation capabilities, thus, allowing for a faster recovery of critical services during a natural disaster. A successful completion of this project will: 1) improve public safety and reduce the cost of natural disasters to US economy using automated and distributed solutions for resilience, 2) help develop new standards to tap into the potential for growing levels of DER penetrations for grid resilience, and 3) encourage DER integration and help reduce US carbon footprint by setting new value propositions for DER technology. The models and results of this effort can be potentially extended to other critical infrastructures. An equally important component of this project focuses on addressing the critical need for a skilled, interdisciplinary, and inclusive workforce to support the future power distribution grid with the help of a well-integrated education plan. This is accomplished through innovative classroom and online courses on power distribution systems, introducing undergraduate students and underrepresented minority students to challenging interdisciplinary problems, and targeted outreach to high-school students. The overarching goal of this CAREER project is to realize the full potential of the emerging distribution grid to manage rarely occurring disruptions that are high-impact low-probability (HILP) events by decentralization of infrastructure and operations. The core idea is that enhanced resilience will be attained through innovations in employing DERs for islanded operation and allowing distributed decision-making during a disaster situation. The project goals are achieved by (1) strategic resource planning to enhance the ability to restore critical services using DERs; (2) distributed decision-making for DER-driven service restoration that allows for a faster service recovery during a disaster; and (3) characterizing graph-theoretic and algebraic conditions that relate to the small-signal stability of DER energized islands and their design parameters; these conditions are used to guide service restoration process such that the restored islands are not only operationally feasible but also stable. The novelty of our approach stems from a closely interwoven planning and operational framework that prioritizes the use of DERs to enable new and transformative ways of operating the power distribution grid during disruptions. Theoretical contributions are expected on the characterization of HILP events towards resilience and risk-averse planning methods; distributed optimization methods for a combinatorial, non-convex, and large-scale problem for service restoration; the analytical characterization of network-level properties for a lossy DER energized island that relates to its small-signal stability; and implications of structural properties and design parameters on the stability of low-inertia systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.