Resilient Energy Allocation Model for Supply Shortage Outages

TL;DR

This paper presents a multi-objective model for energy allocation during supply shortages, balancing cost efficiency and grid resilience, with insights into optimal dispatch strategies under different supply-demand scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-objective dispatch model that explicitly compares cost minimization and resilience maximization during energy shortages.

Findings

Prioritizing energy maximization when supply is less than demand improves resilience.

Monotonically increasing cost functions influence the optimal dispatch strategy.

Trade-offs between cost and resilience depend on supply-demand relationships.

Abstract

Supply Shortage Outages are a major concern during peak demand for developing countries. In the Philippines, commercial loads have unused backup generation of up to 3000 MW, at the same time there are shortages of as much as 700 MW during peak demand. This gives utilities the incentive to implement Demand Response programs to minimize this shortage. But when considering Demand Response from a modeling perspective, social welfare through profit is always the major objective for program implementation. That isn't always the case during an emergency situation as there can be a trade-off between grid resilience and cost of electricity. The question is how the Distribution Utility (DU) shall optimally allocate the unused generation to meet the shortage when this trade-off exists. We formulate a combined multi-objective optimal dispatch model where we can make a direct comparison between the least-cost and resilience objectives. We find that this trade-off is due to the monotonically increasing nature of energy cost functions. If the supply is larger than the demand, the DU can perform a least-cost approach in the optimal dispatch since maximizing the energy generated in this case can lead to multiple solutions. We also find in our simulation that in cases where the supply of energy from the customers is less than shortage quantity, the DU must prioritize maximizing the generated energy rather than minimizing cost.