Resiliency and reliability planning of the electric grid in natural disaster affected areas

The recent spike in the frequency of hurricanes in Central America has severely damaged the conventional electrical grid. Notably, the government of Puerto Rico laid out a plan to reinvent its energy sector to improve its level of resiliency against natural disasters. Better planning and preparation can minimize the damage that needs to be repaired on time. For instance, when necessary facilities, such as hospitals, lose access to electricity, the ability to manage a displaced population after a hurricane is diminished. Computational planning tools allow policymakers and planners to take reliability metrics, resource constraints, interactions between off-grid and traditional grid-extension projects into account when designing contingency plans for the electric grid. The goal of this thesis is to explore the role of a hybrid decentralized structure of the electrical grid to improve the level of reliability through extraordinary circumstances. In this thesis, I develop algorithms that are shown via several case studies. Given the proper input data, these algorithms can provide insight into the technical feasibility of where to deploy microgrids given the existing infrastructure. This research emphasizes the need for granular spatial data at the distribution level to make better planning decisions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Barbar, Marc(Marc F.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jose Ignacio Pérez-Arriaga.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122752

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122752