Wildfire Risk Mitigation in Power Systems Operations: Optimizing Public Safety Power Shutoffs and Restoration Planning

Abstract: Electric grid faults can cause catastrophic wildfires, particularly in regions with high winds and low humidity. In real-time operations, electric utilities are often left with few options for wildfire risk mitigation, leading to the use of disruptive measures such as proactive de-energization of equipment, frequently referred to as public safety power shutoffs. Such power shutoffs have significant impacts on customers, who experience power cuts in an attempt by utilities to protect them from potential fires. This talk introduces the optimal power shut-off problem, a mathematical optimization model to support short-term operational decision making in the context of extreme wildfire risk. We then extend this to a multi-period problem that co-optimizes the power shutoff (considering both wildfire risk reduction and power outages) as well as the post-event restoration efforts given constraints related to inspection and energization of lines. Finally, we discuss some of the challenges of using power flow approximations for this optimization problem and show significant improvements in solution accuracy by using convex relaxations.

Bio: Noah Rhodes is a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he works on optimization for security and flexibility of the power grid. His interests are in both the design of optimization models for novel power grid problems as well as algorithmic methods to solve optimization models more quickly. Noah completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Professor Line Roald, where his research focused on wildfire shutoff planning for power grid safety and on restoration planning of the power grid. He also earned a PhD Minor in Energy Analysis and Policy and performed research on renewable natural gas production capacities. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.