MODELING FRAMEWORK FOR POWER-WATER SYSTEMS RESILIENCE

Abstract:

Water and power systems, although serving different purposes, are tightly intertwined. Water is needed for electricity generation or cooling for safe and efficient functioning, while power is needed to pump or transport water to consumers. With such intricateness comes great vulnerabilities, needed to be addressed. This coupling means that the operation and ultimately, the resilience of one impacts the resilience of the other system. Resilience assessment of such an integrated system is beneficial to understand (1) the system’s ability to absorb a disruption and recover to a normal state and (2) the required infrastructure and modernization needed to improve resilience.

In the literature, very few studies have assessed power and water system from the perspective of resilience, with most focusing more on operational flexibility and dispatch rather than resilience. This effort will demonstrate the potential opportunities of these inter-dependencies as well as challenges presented.

We develop a (n):

1. conceptual framework which consists of identifying relevant linkages between components of those systems, determining the mechanisms for failure and response within an appropriate boundary for the system, and generating dependency impact profile to improve the resiliency of power and water system.
2. executable framework enabling the execution of the conceptual framework, identifying relevant systems components (both water and power) and capturing critical relationships between them.

Using this framework, we seek to quantitatively assess integrated water-power resilience, applied on an irrigation system. We develop a set of scenarios that will be used to test the model and also gather, analyze, and interpret information on relevant factors affecting power-water system resilience. Considering scenarios that include water pump failure, water allocation for irrigation or hydro-power generation, and low-level water, we are able to analyze the effects on farmers crops quality and financial implications, as well as power grid energy mix.