Probabilistic Resilience Measurement for Rural Electric Distribution System Affected by Hurricane Events

Abstract

This paper proposes a fully probabilistic and analytical measurement framework for assessing the resilience of linear power-distribution systems affected by hurricane wind. The topology of rural power-distribution systems can be largely characterized as a set of linear subsystems that emanate from one power substation and individually feature zero redundancy. Moreover, rural power-distribution systems are less robust owing to their high vulnerability to material aging, and they demand longer recovery times due to low socioeconomic resources in rural areas. The proposed framework includes a mechanical analysis of a coupled wood pole and feeder line as a system unit, a definition of component restoration and system-level recovery functions, and, finally, a definition of a new resilience measure, referred to as total mean system resilience (TMSR). Numerical experimentation is provided that validates the effectiveness and analytical tractability of the framework. Insight into how physical aging, local resourcefulness, and spatial sparseness interplay and affect the system resilience is given quantitatively in this paper.