Resilience Enhancement of Electric Power Distribution Grids against Wildfires

Wildfires have been growingly recognized as a prominent threat in regions with high temperatures during the summer. Power distribution systems, especially those passing through forest regions, are exposed and highly vulnerable to wildfires. This paper applies a general formulation to enhance the operational resilience of power distribution networks equipped with renewable energy resources (RESs), e.g., wind and solar energy, micro turbines (MTs) as well as energy storage systems (ESSs) when exposed to progressive wildfires. The wildfire event is characterized comprehensively and the dynamic line rating (DLR) of overhead distribution branches is used to model the impacts of wildfires on distribution power lines. A scenariobased optimization formulation is applied to tackle the system prevailing uncertainties. The applied framework is evaluated on the IEEE 33-node test system and the numerical results reveal the promising efficacy of the methodology.