Large scale storm outage management

This paper describes a process for improving information used by electric utilities for managing restoration of distribution facilities damaged by large-scale storms such as large-scale ice storms and hurricanes. The process is realized in the form of a decision support tool that utilizes the model of the distribution circuit layout, the placement of protective and switching devices and the location of customers to determine how crew resources should be allocated and managed for cost-effective storm outage management. Equipment damage predictions based on the severity and location of the weather are also used to predict where and to what extent circuit damage is likely to occur. Given crew availability and the maintenance crew requirement for each damage type, a storm outage algorithm predicts damage per feeder, area and region and calculates estimated time to restoration for each customer. After the storm hits additional information such as customer calls, switch status and field damage assessments are utilized by the storm outage algorithm to provide updated predictions of damage and estimated time to restore.