Title:  Dynamic Resilience of Large-Scale Power Distribution System

Committee: 

Dr. Ji, , Advisor  

Dr. Juang, Chair

Dr. Meliopoulos

Abstract: Power distribution supplies energy directly to customers. However, power distribution is particularly vulnerable to severe weather, where large scale failures can interrupt electricity service to millions of customers for extended durations. A resilient power distribution system is required. The objective of the proposed research is to study the resilience of power distribution system under impact of severe weather. The resilience refers to both the ability of avoiding failures and the ability to recover fast from failures. The proposed research focus on three major issues. First, a model based on random processes is developed to model the spatiotemporal dynamic (non-stationary and random) power failures and recoveries. Second, a new dynamic resilience metric is defined to characterize the system resilience for both power infrastructure and services to customers. Third, the new model and the metric are applied to large-scale real data of power disruptions in major storms of Hurricane Ike and Sandy to learn the model parameters and the resilience.