Impact of remote control failure on power system restoration time

Extended blackouts are rare events but when they occur they cause severe stress on the society. After a blackout it is important to have a efficient restoration strategy and to be aware of the risks that could extend the restoration process. One important risk during the restoration process after a blackout is the dependence of limited back up power at substations. The back up power is needed to control circuit breakers and for communication equipment. If the outage time is extensive the back up power might run out and the ability to control the circuit breakers is lost and this will extend the restoration time even further. In this paper a stochastic model of the restoration process of a power system with several substations with an uncertain backup power is presented. The model uses a Monte Carlo simulation to identify the impact of remote control failure on power system restoration time.