Defining and Enabling Resiliency of Electric Distribution Systems With Multiple Microgrids

This paper presents a method for quantifying and enabling the resiliency of a power distribution system using analytical hierarchical process and percolation theory. Using this metric, quantitative analysis can be done to analyze the impact of possible control decisions to pro-actively enable the resilient operation of distribution system with multiple microgrids and other resources. Developed resiliency metric can also be used in short term distribution system planning. The benefits of being able to quantify resiliency can help distribution system planning engineers and operators to justify control actions, compare different reconfiguration algorithms, and develop proactive control actions to avert power system outage due to impending catastrophic weather situations or other adverse events. Validation of the proposed method is done using modified CERTS microgrids and a modified industrial distribution system. Simulation results show topological and composite metric considering power system characteristics to quantify the resiliency of a distribution system with the proposed methodology, and improvements in resiliency using two-stage reconfiguration algorithm and multiple microgrids.