Electric Grid Disaster Response Management - A Systems of Systems Engineering Approach

As customer outage counts escalate and demand for service restoration becomes daunting and dynamic, electric utility restoration resources utilization becomes more and more challenging during natural disasters. System status information exchange between operators, intelligent electronic devices (IEDs), restoration analysts, and field crews is handled mainly by the Outage Management System (OMS) and the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) processes. The intrinsic use of OMS and SCADA processes in managing field resources presents strain in restoration efforts. This research employs the concept of a Location Set Covering Problem (LSCP) to solve the problem of a centralized SCADA managing distributed field resource activities. A decentralized SCADA solution with the use of substation nodes in the electric grid network is presented to demonstrate a reduction in travel distance by first responders. This is implemented through a Multi Agent Systems (MAS) approach that combines the use of Specific Points of Contact (SPOCs) with the aid of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and the confluence of Regional Mutual Assistance Groups (RMAGs). The proposed multi-agent architecture will be implemented using the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) IntelliGrid layered model. A modified architectural perspective using the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850 standard is developed to identify the physical and functional architectures and linkages between the constituent systems for improved restoration practices. A System of Systems (SoS) perspective to analyze the subsystems from a logistical, technical, and operational viewpoint is presented using SysML. A unique framework that integrates qualitative and quantitative analysis of response and recovery practices for improved restoration practice by electric utility entities is developed.