EFRI: Resilient and Sustainable Interdependent Electric Power and Communications Systems

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

PI name: Lamine Mili Institution: Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University Proposal Number: 0835879 Title: EFRI-RESIN: Resilient and Sustainable Interdependent Electric Power and Communications Systems This award is an outcome of the competition as part of the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (NSF 07-579) program solicitation under the subtopic Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructures (RESIN). The goal of this project is to develop complex systems theories and methods aimed at modeling, assessing, and reengineering the resiliency of sustainable interdependent electric power and communications infrastructures to catastrophic failures and natural hazards. Currently, the monitoring, protection, and control of electric power systems rely heavily on computer-based communications networks. Consequently, the failure of one infrastructure can affect the functioning of the other. This research will investigate the impact that these interdependencies have on the vulnerabilities of both infrastructures. It will suggest ways to make them more agile and resilient to anticipated and unanticipated failures and natural hazards while making the energy supply sustainable and less harmful to the environment. A new graduate course on risk management of critical infrastructures based on research results will be developed. One facet of the research is to extend the scope and applicability of the Highly Optimized Tolerance (HOT) approach to modeling cascading failures across interdependent electric power and communications infrastructures. The HOT method has previously been used with models involving only a single type of event and assumes that any multiple events of the same type are independent. This project will extend HOT to develop a risk function that involves not only several types of events but also dependent events to analyze the interdependent power and communication systems. To address the sustainability issue, the research will investigate the use of microgrids supplied with renewable and fossil distributed generation and energy storage systems. Previous research has suggested that a microgrid type of power distribution system is more resilient, e.g. less subject to a system wide failure, and more sustainable. This is due to a collection of appropriate incentives that can be provided to encourage customers to participate in energy conservation programs and to agree to rapid load shedding during emergency conditions to ensure grid survivability. In addition to HOT, another part of the research of this project will be to investigate financial impacts and required incentives to address resiliency and sustainability from the resource, environment and socioeconomic points of view. The project will use existing data from failures in the Southern Brazilian power and communications systems and from the North American Electric Reliability Council. The project will develop the theoretical foundations of a sustainability assessment framework (SAF) that uses two categories of quantitative measures: sustainability indicators and total cost functions. The SAF methods developed will rely on the concept of energy, which measures the effective amount of energy that can be converted into work.