This award is an outcome of the competition as part of the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (NSF 07-579) program solicitation under the subtopic Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructures (RESIN). The goal of this project is to develop complex systems theories and methods aimed at modeling, assessing, and reengineering the resiliency of sustainable interdependent electric power and communications infrastructures to catastrophic failures and natural hazards. Currently, the monitoring, protection, and control of electric power systems rely heavily on computer-based communications networks. Consequently, the failure of one infrastructure can affect the functioning of the other. This research will investigate the impact that these interdependencies have on the vulnerabilities of both infrastructures. It will suggest ways to make them more agile and resilient to anticipated and unanticipated failures and natural hazards while making the energy supply sustainable and less harmful to the environment. A new graduate course on risk management of critical infrastructures based on research results will be developed.
One facet of the research is to extend the scope and applicability of the Highly Optimized Tolerance (HOT) approach to modeling cascading failures across interdependent electric power and communications infrastructures. The HOT method has previously been used with models involving only a single type of event and assumes that any multiple events of the same type are independent. This project will extend HOT to develop a risk function that involves not only several types of events but also dependent events to analyze the interdependent power and communication systems. To address the sustainability issue, the research will investigate the use of microgrids supplied with renewable and fossil distributed generation and energy storage systems. Previous research has suggested that a microgrid type of power distribution system is more resilient, e.g. less subject to a system wide failure, and more sustainable. This is due to a collection of appropriate incentives that can be provided to encourage customers to participate in energy conservation programs and to agree to rapid load shedding during emergency conditions to ensure grid survivability. In addition to HOT, another part of the research of this project will be to investigate financial impacts and required incentives to address resiliency and sustainability from the resource, environment and socioeconomic points of view.
The project will use existing data from failures in the Southern Brazilian power and communications systems and from the North American Electric Reliability Council. The project will develop the theoretical foundations of a sustainability assessment framework (SAF) that uses two categories of quantitative measures: sustainability indicators and total cost functions. The SAF methods developed will rely on the concept of energy, which measures the effective amount of energy that can be converted into work.
National security and the quality of life of any nation rely on the continuous and reliable operation of a complex integrated system of interdependent critical infrastructures that provide basic services to all segments of society. The failure of these infrastructures may have an adverse effect on the wellbeing and the economy of the whole society. Following the concerns raised by the increased vulnerability of these infrastructures to major breakdowns, their protection against all types of threats, be they technical failure, malicious attacks, or natural hazards, is receiving a great deal of attention from state and federal institutions. In this EFRI project, we have primarily been concerned with the risk assessment and management of catastrophic failures of coupled electric power grids and the associated communications/computer infrastructures along with the mitigation of the impact on the environment that their construction, operation, and disposal may entail. Specifically, co-simulation software programs of these two coupled infrastructures have been developed and methodologies and tools of a sustainability assessment framework have been initiated. These will add to the toolbox of planners and decision makers to evolve the current infrastructures to smart grids with the least cost for both the society and the environment. Smart grids are robust, resilient, and sustainable infrastructures that are endowed with the necessary agility to gracefully degrade and rapidly return to normal operation when subject to unexpected major disturbances while minimizing energy usage, the extent of service interruption, and air and water pollution. This capability is achieved in part thanks to a collection of small-scale energy grids known as microgrids, which interconnect renewable and non-renewable generation and storage devices to local loads. These microgrids are assumed to be controlled in a distributed and coordinated manner by computer agents. They are also assumed to be operated by businesses competing in a vibrant retail market that provides customers with appropriate incentives to participate in energy savings and grid survivability during emergency conditions. Another problem that has been addressed in this research is the identification of the best placement and sizing of microgrids for system reliability improvements. To this end, a software program that assesses the composite reliability of a deregulated power system has been developed. Simulations on two test studies have shown that a small penetration of 5% of microgrids can lead to a significant improvement in system reliability to cascading failure. However, in order for a new technology such as microgrids and their associated communications systems to benefit a society with a market-oriented economy, the new technology must not only provide better services and/or lower costs than other existing technologies, but it must also provide benefits that can be sufficiently translated into economic value. In other words, social benefits and costs need to be reflected in the revenues and expenditures of the owner/operator. Whether this can occur depends not only on whether societal benefits exceed societal costs but also on the design of the electricity markets in which the microgrids and its consumers participate. In this research, this problem has been investigated and recommendations have been made on how to design such a market. From a broader impact perspective, this research has given the opportunity to three cohorts of graduate and undergraduate students to perform research on resiliency and sustainability of pilot projects in Europe for six weeks. Two cohorts visited the PowerMatching Ciy to study socio-technical interactions taking place in a smart-grid city funded by the European Union in Groningen, The Netherlands, while a third cohort visited Helsinki, Finland to investigate one of the most efficient heating and cooling systems in the world by means of the highly integrated co-generation of electric and thermal energy infrastructures. A number of PhD dissertations and Master’s theses resulted from this funding. Furthermore, the main results of this research have been presented to engineers in the power industry and researchers at federal agencies and laboratories and published in a number of journal and conference papers. This EFRI project has also advanced the development of sustainable critical infrastructures and has produced a planning and development model that, if adopted by utilities, will have a high impact on the risk management of interdependent communications and power systems subject to catastrophic events. It has also introduced a model standard for state and local planning agencies responsible for setting and licensing critical facilities and services that depend on these infrastructures.
