A Hierarchical Response-Based Approach to the Load Restoration Problem

Power system resilience is the ability of an electric power grid to withstand, absorb, and rapidly recover from low-probability high-impact disasters. In recent years, several major incidents all around the world have highlighted the need for operative solutions in order to materialize the resilience of the power grid in response to such catastrophic events. With the advent of synchrophasor technology in modern power systems, it has emerged as a promising measure to improve the resilience of power network. At the event of widespread outages, synchrophasor technology could facilitate the restoration procedure, reduce total outage duration, and mitigate damaging impacts to critical loads. This paper proposes a two-stage hierarchical approach to the transmission-level load restoration problem based on synchrophasors. The first stage determines the optimal amount and location of load pickups, and in the second stage, the predetermined decisions are implemented and the network stability is monitored until reaching a viable equilibrium point. The whole problem is decomposed into a set of tractable subproblems in order to improve the computational efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is further illustrated through a case study based on the IEEE 39-bus system.