Coordinated optimization of reserve fund scale and emergency resource allocation for power utilities under multi-type large-scale blackout risks

Large-scale blackouts increasingly arise from heterogeneous causes such as natural disasters, equipment failures and cyber attacks, which force power utilities to decide, before any event is known, both how large a financial reserve to hold and how to convert it into emergency response capability. This paper develops a coordinated optimization of reserve fund scale and emergency resource allocation under multi-type large-scale blackout risk. A unified set of multi-type blackout scenarios is constructed by Monte Carlo sampling and condensed by a tail-aware scenario reduction into a tractable representative set. The restoration technology distinguishes a repair channel, in which crews and materials enter as complementary inputs, from a re-energization channel supplied by mobile equipment, and both channels carry cause-dependent productivity so that the response mechanism differs across disasters, failures and cyber attacks. A two-stage risk-averse stochastic program co-optimizes the first-stage reserve fund and resource pre-positioning together with the second-stage post-event response, embeds a conditional-value-at-risk measure to limit extreme losses, and is solved by a sample-average-approximation scheme with an L-shaped decomposition. Case studies on a stylized 118-node planning instance show that the coordinated risk-averse plan attains an out-of-sample risk-adjusted cost of 352.1 $M against 558.2 $M for a decoupled scheme and 604.7 $M for a risk-neutral scheme, while holding CVaR 0.95 to 154.3 $M and expected unserved energy to 1478 MWh. The tail-aware reduction keeps the CVaR 0.95 error at 1.08% of its raw-sample value with 200 retained scenarios, against 11.91% for random subsampling. The cause mix governs the resource portfolio, and the value of lost load is the dominant economic driver of the appropriate reserve scale, with a standardized regression coefficient of 0.66 under joint parameter uncertainty. The study is presented as a methodological proof of concept: the instance is synthetic and network operability is not modelled, so the results characterize the structure of the preparedness trade-off rather than a validated prescription for a specific utility.

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PLoS ONE
Published
2026-09-24
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0352511
Primary Topic
Optimal Power Flow Distribution
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article
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Coordinated optimization of reserve fund scale and emergency resource allocation for power utilities under multi-type large-scale blackout risks

Yongju Gu, Zhiwei Zhang, Liyun Zhang
PLoS ONE
Optimal Power Flow Distribution
article

Coordinated optimization of reserve fund scale and emergency resource allocation for power utilities under multi-type large-scale blackout risks

Yongju Gu, Zhiwei Zhang, Liyun Zhang
article en

Abstract

Large-scale blackouts increasingly arise from heterogeneous causes such as natural disasters, equipment failures and cyber attacks, which force power utilities to decide, before any event is known, both how large a financial reserve to hold and how to convert it into emergency response capability. This paper develops a coordinated optimization of reserve fund scale and emergency resource allocation under multi-type large-scale blackout risk. A unified set of multi-type blackout scenarios is constructed by Monte Carlo sampling and condensed by a tail-aware scenario reduction into a tractable representative set. The restoration technology distinguishes a repair channel, in which crews and materials enter as complementary inputs, from a re-energization channel supplied by mobile equipment, and both channels carry cause-dependent productivity so that the response mechanism differs across disasters, failures and cyber attacks. A two-stage risk-averse stochastic program co-optimizes the first-stage reserve fund and resource pre-positioning together with the second-stage post-event response, embeds a conditional-value-at-risk measure to limit extreme losses, and is solved by a sample-average-approximation scheme with an L-shaped decomposition. Case studies on a stylized 118-node planning instance show that the coordinated risk-averse plan attains an out-of-sample risk-adjusted cost of 352.1 $M against 558.2 $M for a decoupled scheme and 604.7 $M for a risk-neutral scheme, while holding CVaR 0.95 to 154.3 $M and expected unserved energy to 1478 MWh. The tail-aware reduction keeps the CVaR 0.95 error at 1.08% of its raw-sample value with 200 retained scenarios, against 11.91% for random subsampling. The cause mix governs the resource portfolio, and the value of lost load is the dominant economic driver of the appropriate reserve scale, with a standardized regression coefficient of 0.66 under joint parameter uncertainty. The study is presented as a methodological proof of concept: the instance is synthetic and network operability is not modelled, so the results characterize the structure of the preparedness trade-off rather than a validated prescription for a specific utility.

PLoS ONEVol. 21(9)
Xihua University (CN), Southwest Petroleum University (CN), College of Accounting (SI)
Openalex Percentile: Top 21%
Optimal Power Flow Distribution
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