Risk-controlled Expansion Planning with Distributed Resources (REPAIR)
Risk-controlled Expansion Planning with Distributed Resources (REPAIR)
Informing investment decisions for utility resource adequacy with consideration of risk management that address both routine reliability events and high-impact low-probability resilience events.
Project Objective
A new approach for planning the expansion of large-scale systems while balancing the risk of a resilience event and costs to enhance reliability and resilience.
Project Background
Current electric utility practices show that investments to improve distribution system reliability, e.g., undergrounding, protective hardware and software, etc. are often based on analysis of historical performance and determined using empirical knowledge. Unlike other drivers of grid planning, such as load growth or hosting capacity, forward-looking optimization or simulation is not typically conducted in the distribution system.
Even as electric utilities are being forced to think more about resilience in the face of more frequent and intense extreme weather, investment decisions are still largely reliant on traditional approaches focused on routine historic failures. As the power system continues to evolve amid a quickly changing climate, there is a need for methodologies to support utility investment decisions under reliability and resilience programs that capture forward-thinking risk mitigation. The Risk-controlled Expansion Planning with Distributed Resources (REPAIR) tool represents one such forward-thinking approach.
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Sponsor
This project was funded by the Department of Energy Office of Electricity.
The open-access code repository is free and available for download.
A free demonstration of the REPAIR tool is coming soon.