Equitable Operational Resilience of Power Distribution Grids in the Face of Progressive Wildfires

This paper proposes a stochastic optimal strategy for equitable proactive actions of distribution grids against progressive wildfires to enhance operational resilience. The paper first models the impact of a wildfire on power distribution systems. To this end, it mathematically formulates the impact of wildfire and generated heat on powerlines capacity and status by employing non-steady state dynamic heat balance equations. It also models the effect of wildfire byproducts including heat, smoke, and ash on renewable power generation (i.e., solar and wind). Then, it develops a stochastic optimization problem which incorporates the impacts of wildfire on the system as well as physical, operational, and environmental constraints. An objective function is introduced to consider both grid resilience and equity criteria during system contingencies. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is tested over the standard unbalanced IEEE 37-bus benchmark, showing the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.