Review of Proactive Operational Measures for the Distribution Power System Resilience Enhancement Against Hurricane Events

Electricity supply is the backbone of any industrialized economy globally. Unfortunately, this important infrastructure is facing serious problems leading to large power outages recently. Human and natural disaster-induced threats have been identified as the major causes of these outages. The threat posed by a natural disaster, specifically hurricane events as it affects the power system distribution network is the main interest of this research. Natural disasters cannot be stopped from happening but luckily enough, weather stations around the globe have recorded a lot of successful accurate weather predictions over the years. While some natural disasters such as earthquakes can hardly be predicted, other can be predicted accurately, for instance, cyclones, hurricanes, etc. Therefore, leveraging accurate weather prediction of hurricane data, system operators can significantly improve the distribution power system network (DPSN) against hurricane events using proactive operational planning measures. A comprehensive review of the methodologies used for proactive operational resilience enhancement scheme is explored in this review. Statistical models have been generally utilized leveraging historical weather data and power system components’ failure data in various regression strategies to foresee and estimate damages and outages caused by the hurricane in the past. The topology-based approach for power framework weakness and resilience, and the use of system components’ fragility curveMonte Carlo simulation (MCS) model have also been explored. Although, all these models are suitable in estimating the damage caused by the predicted approaching hurricane events, high computational complexity/time limits their application for a real-time proactive prediction of the DPSN line outage caused by the hurricane events. To enhance the DPSN resilience against hurricanes events, a real-time proactive system line outage prediction model under hurricane events is needed for system pre-disaster operational optimization scheduling and resource allocation. In this view, this research explored the past, present and this paper presents researchable operational measures that can greatly enhance the DPSN against hurricane events.