Modeling to Improve Risk and Equity in Power Transmission Grids 


As the electric power grid critical infrastructure grows increasingly heterogeneous, a key question is how to encourage and ensure relatively equitable access to the energy it supplies. With diverse socio-economic regions linked to the grid and various generation types, achieving equitable access to clean energy, remains an important aspirational goal.  Using models and building on previous work, this talk describes our investigation of a heterogenous grid modeled on the Alaska Railbelt, allowing us to explore the intrinsic inequities and possible mechanisms to enhance the equity across regions.  We apply risk and equity metrics to different regions to examine how penalties which change the cost can impact the equity as well as the overall grid’s risk and dynamics. Underlying this presentation is the idea that simple models can be used to illustrate the underling physics and dynamics of many systems and to find solutions to appropriately framed problems.