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Equity-centered methodology to mitigate the consequences of long-duration power outages, An

Dugan, Jesse
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2025-05-26
Abstract
Natural disasters can cause large-scale and long-duration power outages that have devastating societal impacts. These outages do not impact people equally, and some individuals are more vulnerable when the power goes out. However, these vulnerabilities have not been quantified and/or incorporated into the design and operation of the power grid. This dissertation develops an index of social vulnerability to long-duration power outages and applies this index to inform distribution system power restoration in the wake of a disaster. The first study develops an index of social vulnerability specific to long-duration power outages for use in power grid resilience models. The vulnerability index is mapped for census tracts across the United States, and results indicate which tracts are most likely to require support during an outage. In the second study, the associations between current trends in social vulnerability to long-duration power outages and historical redlining are investigated. Results show that historically redlined neighborhoods are, on average, more vulnerable during a power outage. The third study incorporates the index of vulnerability into an equity-centered model of power restoration. The model is a mixed-integer quadratically-constrained program that dispatches mobile energy storage systems to restore vulnerable customers following a disaster. Results indicate that incorporating equity into power restoration does not negatively impact system performance in terms of total restored energy, merely shifting the energy towards customers who need it the most. The fourth study presents a framework for equity-aware and evacuation-informed power restoration. The model leverages a mixed-integer nonlinear program for optimal evacuation scheduling and the mixed-integer quadratically-constrained program from the third study for power restoration. The model is validated on a case study of Greeley, Colorado; results indicate that this approach provides additional support for vulnerable customers compared to evacuation-uninformed restoration. Overall, this research has generated new knowledge and tools for researchers, disaster support organizations, and utilities to prioritize equity in power outage response.
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