Parallel Power System Restoration

After a blackout event, power system restoration is an essential activity for grid resilience; operators restart generators, re-establish transmission paths, and restore loads. With goal of restoring electric service in the shortest time, core decisions planning are to partition into subnetworks, each which has initial source black-start (called sectionalization problem), then all generators network generator startup sequencing (GSS) problem) as soon possible. Due their complexity, GSS problems usually solved separately, often resulting suboptimal solution. Our paper develops models computational methods solve two simultaneously. We first study complexity problem develop efficient integer linear programming formulation. integrate with formulation parallel (PPSR) find exact optimal solutions. To larger systems, we bounding approaches that good upper lower bounds efficiently. Finally, address challenges very large grids, randomized approach high-quality feasible solution quickly. experiments demonstrate proposed able solutions PPSR up 2,000-bus systems. History: Accepted by Andrea Lodi, Area Editor Design & Analysis Algorithms – Discrete. Funding: This research was supported Visiting Faculty Program Argonne National Laboratory U.S. Department Energy Advanced Grid Modeling [Grant DE-OE0000875].