Managing Equality and Equity in Load Shedding for Wildfire Mitigation

The natural and human habitats are significantly threatened because of the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires. In high-risk areas, de-energizing the electrical components has become an essential preventive measure to mitigate the risk of power system-initiated wildfires. These de-energized decisions must be carefully scheduled to prevent disproportionate impact and ensure fairness in load shedding all over the community. This paper proposes a new approach to find a tradeoff between equality in load shedding and fairness in load supply. The proposed equality and equity-based optimal power shutoff plan (EEOPS) ensures the balance between equality and equity by adjusting the shutoff decisions of lines while effectively reducing the wildfire ignition risk in the power system. The performance of the optimal shutoff plan is demonstrated by using the RTS-GMLC test case.