Resilient Restoration of Distribution Systems in Coordination With Electric Bus Scheduling

Electric buses (EBs) possess large-capacity batteries and are dispatched by a central operator, exhibiting great potential to enhance the resilience of distribution systems (DSs) against meteorological disasters. This paper proposes an optimization model for joint post-disaster DS restoration, considering coordinated dispatching with EBs. By assuming that the DS can rent some EBs from the bus company, an EB scheduling problem with adjustable timetables is established. Idle buses are placed at designated areas and feed power back to the grid via charging piles or charging stations in case of need. The schedule of the remaining buses should meet the passenger transport demand, which is smaller than usual because of bad weather. The objective is to maximize the total benefits and minimize the EB rental cost of the grid company. Techniques in integer algebra are used to reformulate the proposed restoration problem with bus scheduling constraints as a mixed-integer linear program, which can be processed by off-the-shelf solvers. The proposed method is tested on a modified 15-bus system and IEEE 123-bus system. The results demonstrate that the resilience of the system is enhanced, and the benefits of the grid company increase significantly, because of the flexibility brought by EBs.