Modeling the Deployment of Emergency Repair Crews in Power Distribution Networks Following Severe Weather Events

Abstract

We formulate and solve an optimization problem to determine the number of additional repair crews required to mitigate widespread outages in power distribution networks caused by severe weather events. The problem is treated within queueing theory, with the arrivals of service requests modeled as a nonstationary and non-ordinary process, which is the key feature of the approach.We develop an algorithm and software for computing two performance measures used in the objective: (i) the probability of completing a given number of requests within a specified time budget, and (ii) crew utilization. A case study demonstrates the application of the approach.