Emergency Load Shedding to Enhance Resiliency Considering Operator and Customer Equity

Recent high impact low frequency events have caused significant concerns on reliability and resiliency of electrical grid. Transmission operators might enforce load curtailment during such events to preserve the integrity of the power network and to prevent catastrophic system failures and long-lasting outages. Although load-shedding procedures employed by system operators are reviewed and constraints are highlighted throughout most hazardous incidents, such mechanisms are not evaluated to ensure consumer fairness and system impacts are addressed. This study was conducted at the transmission level in order to propose a new curtailment algorithm that addresses the limitations of the load shedding mechanism of the Southwest Power Pool. The study was motivated by the North American winter storm occurred in February 2021. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested and compared with Southwest Power Pool's curtailment model via IEEE RTS-96 test system.