Enhancing Resilience of Active Distribution Networks to Extreme Weather Events Now and in the Future

Decarbonization, climate change, and digitalization are bringing significant changes to electrical power systems worldwide. In this ever-changing scenario, power distribution networks are evolving from passive to active, with an increasing uptake of low carbon distributed energy resources and information and communication technologies; and also increasingly vulnerable to different types of severe weather events, thanks to an increasing dependency on electricity for the well-functioning of economies and societies worldwide. In this context, this chapter describes how active power distribution networks can take advantage of distinct capabilities to maintain or improve their resilience to different severe weather event categories. It considers different resilience enhancement strategies and enabling technologies along with implementation timescales suitable for resilience planning and operational measures. Current challenges to ensure that active power distribution networks remain resilient to different types of severe weather events are also discussed. These aspects are embedded into an optimization problem formulation aimed at improving the network operating performance under severe weather conditions, making use of distributed energy resources for resilience enhancements over different timescales. The methodology is demonstrated in a realistic distribution network in the United Kingdom, with simulation results showing the resilience enhancement benefits provided by these technologies.