CAREER: Enabling Operational Resilience in Decentralized Electric Power Distribution Systems

自然灾害造成的电力系统停电造成的惊人损失估计为每年180亿至330亿美元，以及关键服务长期丧失对人身安全和安保的不利影响，要求提高电网对极端天气事件的复原力。对于老化的中低压配电系统来说，对弹性的需求尤其关键，据估计，90%的停电是由该系统造成的。这个职业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)进行岛屿形成和自下而上恢复所需的灵活性，并增强了配电自动化能力，从而允许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的弹性解决方案改善公共安全，降低自然灾害对美国经济的成本；2)帮助制定新的标准，以挖掘电网弹性的DER渗透水平不断提高的潜力；3)通过为DER技术设定新的价值主张，鼓励DER整合并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、跨学科和包容的劳动力的迫切需求，以通过良好整合的教育计划来支持未来的配电网。这是通过关于配电系统的创新课堂和在线课程实现的，向本科生和代表性不足的少数族裔学生介绍具有挑战性的跨学科问题，并有针对性地向高中生进行外联。该职业项目的总体目标是充分发挥新兴配电网的潜力，通过分散基础设施和运营来管理很少发生的高影响、低概率(HILP)事件。其核心思想是，通过创新地采用灾难应急系统进行孤岛行动，并允许在灾害情况下进行分散决策，将增强复原力。项目目标是通过以下方式实现的：(1)战略资源规划，以增强使用DER恢复关键服务的能力；(2)分布式决策，用于DER驱动的服务恢复，允许在灾难期间更快地恢复服务；(3)描述与断电岛屿及其设计参数的小干扰稳定性相关的图论和代数条件；这些条件用于指导服务恢复过程，使得恢复的岛屿不仅在操作上可行，而且稳定。我们方法的新颖性源于紧密交织的规划和运营框架，该框架优先使用DER，以实现在中断期间运营配电网的新的、变革性的方式。预计将在以下方面做出理论贡献：针对弹性和风险规避规划方法的HILP事件的表征；用于服务恢复的组合、非凸和大规模问题的分布式优化方法；与其小信号稳定性相关的有损耗、较高能量的岛屿的网络级特性的分析表征；以及结构特性和设计参数对低惯性系统稳定性的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.