Reliability Challenges and Improvement Strategies in Puerto Rico

Reliability improvements go well beyond smart grid technologies. They include vegetation control and animal guarding, as well as advanced technologies including reclosers. In Puerto Rico, where the reliability and resiliency challenges have been severe in the aftermath of Hurricanes Maria and Irma in 2017, it is crucial to evaluate all ways to reduce outages. Optimizing system-wide reliability improvement requires employing various measures to entire distribution feeders or portions thereof and deploying centralized systems that enhance distribution system observability and controllability. As an initial step, grid operators typically prioritize their feeders based on reliability metrics or other more complex performance indicators and estimate potential improvements of reliability indices once these measures are in place, enabling benefit cost analysis calculations to justify these investments. The determination of these targets measures considers also the impact to critical facilities and other important lifeline infrastructure. With this in mind, this paper highlights uniqueness and challenges of the power system in Puerto Rico, leading to strategic reliability improvement measures that although universal, have their own adoption challenges and quantifiable impact. A targeted investment is crucial in maximizing the positive impact to all customers in the existing landscape.