Evaluation of the impact of Heat-Wave on Distribution System Resilience

TL;DR

This study assesses how heat waves affect urban distribution system resilience using real data, a data-driven fault simulation, and Monte Carlo analysis to quantify reliability impacts and potential benefits of system improvements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel data-driven methodology combining real fault data and Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate heat wave impacts on distribution system resilience.

Findings

Heat waves increase fault rates in distribution systems.

Monte Carlo simulations quantify resilience degradation during heat waves.

Legislative benefits of system substitution are calculated.

Abstract

This paper presents the findings about the impact of heat waves on a real urban distribution system. A data-driven methodology is proposed to simulate the portion of faults that can be associated to normal conditions (and hence to reliability) and the portion correlated to the heat wave occurrence. Based on real data collected in the years 2012-2017, the fault rates associated to reliability and resilience have been calculated and then used to feed a Monte Carlo simulation aiming to manage the uncertainty in the fault occurrence. Finally, based on the Italian legislation, the benefits deriving by the substitution of the faulted portion of the system have been calculated.