Balancing Wildfire Risk and Power Outages through Optimized Power Shut-Offs

Code

• github.com/WISPO-POP/PowerModelsWildfire.jl
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Abstract

Electric grid faults can be the source of catas-trophic wildfires, particularly in regions with high winds andlow humidity. In short-term operations, electric utilities are leftwith few actions to mitigate the risk of wildfires, leading touse of disruptive measures such as proactive de-energization ofequipment, frequently referred to as public safety power shut-offs. Decisions of how to operate the grid in situations withhigh wildfire risk has significant impacts on customers, who maylose access to electricity in an attempt to protect them from theoutbreak of fires. This work proposes the optimal power shut-offproblem, an optimization model to support operational decisionmaking in the context of extreme wildfire risk. Specifically, themodel optimizes the operation of the grid to maximize the amountof power that can be delivered, while proactively minimizing therisk of wildfire ignitions by selectively de-energizing componentsin the grid. This is the first optimization model to considerpreventive wildfire risk measures and their impact on powersystems reliability at a short-term, operational time-frame. Theeffectiveness of the method is demonstrated on an augmentedversion of the IEEE-RTS GMLC test case, located in SouthernCalifornia, and compared against two simpler approaches. Weobserve that the optimization-based model reduces both wildfirerisk and lost load shed relative to the benchmarks.

Reproductions