Resilient Expansion Planning of Electricity Grid Under Prolonged Wildfire Risk

Public safety power shut-off (PSPS) during potentially dangerous weather conditions is an emergency measure within areas prone to wildfires. While balancing the risk of wildfire ignition and the continuation of energy supply is a short-term operation challenge, this paper explores the optimal long-term resilient expansion planning strategies. With the quantified risk of wildfire ignition, the proposed expansion planning problem maximizes the supplied power to the end-users while limiting the risk of wildfire ignition. The presented scheme provides utility decision-makers with three groups of network expansion decisions, namely addition of new lines, modification of existing lines, and installation of distributed energy resources (DERs). Given the uncertainty of DERs and wildfire risk, a two-stage robust optimization problem is proposed which ensures power system resilience against unfavorable events. The case studies illustrate how the presented model balances shutting off customers, DER installation, and line addition/modification while inhibiting wildfire ignition risk. Besides, the results suggest that, with appropriate transmission switching, DER installation can be the optimal choice for meeting the growing demand while limiting wildfire ignition risk. The implications of different risk level choices are illustrated, and the impacts of uncertainties on the expansion decisions are explored. Finally, the results of applying the proposed model to the IEEE 118-bus test network are illustrated.