Operational Resilience During Storms by Optimizing Resources: A Case Study of Crew Allocation & Redeployment

Rapid electrification and climate goals coupled with the increasing dependencies on reliable electric power is driving utility efforts to improve the resilience of distribution systems. Increasing intensity and frequency of adverse weather events force utility companies to prioritize grid hardening initiatives, however, budgetary constraints oftentimes limit these initiatives. An alternate approach at improving resilience is to understand and optimize the dispatch of restoration resources (crews), an often overlooked aspect. This paper reviews a typical utility’s restoration framework, and proposes a methodology to assess existing crew efficiency as well as actively redeploy personnel to accelerate restoration efforts during extreme weather events. A case study considering a 7-day storm is utilized to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methodology. The results indicate that active crew allocation and redeployment can reduce outages by 34 hours in the case simulated.