An Ecological Robustness Oriented Optimal Power Flow for Power Systems' Survivability

Abstract

Traditional optimal power flow (OPF) ensures power systems are operated safely at minimum cost. Recent disasters have highlighted that a focus on minimizing cost can result in a fragile system, such as the immense economic loss and adverse societal impacts after the 2021 Texas Winter Storm. Resilience objectives must also be considered to guide power system operation through unexpected non-ideal conditions. The long-term survivability of ecosystems against various unexpected catastrophes has been quantified by ecologists using the metric RECO. The metric depends on a system's network structure and energy flows, enabling its application to power systems to investigate the impact of a bio-inspired power system to address resilience needs. This paper formulates an ecological robustness oriented OPF (RECO OPF) problem to optimize power systems for reliability and survivability under unexpected contingencies. Six power system cases, ranging from 24- to 500-buses are optimized, comparing the reliability and cost of the RECO OPF with an economics-driven OPF and a security-constrained OPF (SCOPF). The results show the ecologically-inspired method is able to improve the reliability of the power systems with fewer violations and unsolved scenarios during unexpected disturbances. The results also support the potential to use RECO to control power flow distribution for improved survivability and resilience.