Novel Demand Forecasting and Reliability Enhancement Approaches for Electrical Grids in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

新型冠状病毒疫情令电力公司在正常系统运作及应急反应方面面临更大挑战，原因是众多变数瞬息万变。对于正常的系统运行，不断变化的社会经济模式以及不断变化的消费地点和时间将显着改变客户的能源消耗。这需要对能源需求有新的认识，以提高发电、调度和监管的效率。就应急反应而言，COVID-19导致的罢工、劳动力中断及旅行限制已严重影响常规应急计划的成效。为应对上述技术挑战，该合作伙伴关系的目标是为应对COVID-19疫情，开发能源需求预测和提高电网可靠性的创新方法。具体而言，本集团将分析COVID-19疫情对能源需求预测的影响，并据此分别为疫情期间及疫情后期间开发新的短期及长期需求预测方法。此外，本集团将研究COVID-19疫情对电力系统运行可靠性的影响，并将提出积极的机组调度策略，以提高电力系统运行的可靠性，同时降低COVID-19传播的风险。 合作伙伴组织RUNESTIT（RWI）Synthetics Inc.在开发合成建模环境方面拥有长期经验，使创新决策者能够解决能源和电信行业主要应用中最复杂和关键的问题。RWI Synthetics Inc.与加拿大AB省埃德蒙顿的电力研究所（EPRI）和当地电力公司合作，将利用研究成果来增强其合成模式，预计在COVID-19大流行期间和COVID-19后的未来，通过智能决策，这些模式将使所有类型的加拿大电力公司和技术供应商受益。

The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated the challenges for electric utilities, in both normal system operation and emergency response, due to numerous fast-changing and unknown variables. For normal system operation, the changing socioeconomic patterns and shifting consumption locations and timings will significantly change customer energy consumption. This requires a new understanding of energy demand to improve the efficiency of generation, dispatch, and regulation. For emergency response, the quarantines, workforce disruptions, and travel restrictions caused by COVID-19 have significantly affected the efficacy of conventional contingency plans. To address the aforementioned technical challenges, the goal of this partnership is to develop innovative approaches for energy demand forecasting and grid reliability enhancement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on energy demand forecasting will be analyzed, based on which novel short-term and long-term demand forecasting methods will be developed for pandemic and post-pandemic periods, respectively. Also, impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operational reliability of power systems will be investigated, and an active crew dispatching strategy will be proposed to improve reliability of power system operation with reduced risks of spreading COVID-19. The partner organization, RUNWITHIT (RWI) Synthetics Inc., has long-term experience in developing synthetic modelling environments to enable innovative decision makers to tackle the most complex and critical issues with major applications in energy and telecommunication industries. In collaboration with Electric Power and Research Institute (EPRI) and local electric utilities in Edmonton, AB, Canada, RWI Synthetics Inc. will leverage the research outcomes to enhance their synthetic modes, which are expected to advantage all types of Canadian electric utilities and technology suppliers through intelligent decision making during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-COVID-19 future.