Resilient Power Systems against Wildfire Risks: Towards a Human-Centric and Secure Future
Peixiao Fan, Shuangqi Li, Siqi Bu, Yuxin Wen, C. Y. Chung
Abstract
Wildfires have become increasingly frequent and severe, posing significant threats to the resilience of power systems. Wildfire-induced power outages disrupt essential services, triggering cascading social impacts that pose significant risks to system security and profound threats to human life. Therefore, it is imperative to analyze the impact of wildfires on the resilience of power systems and propose innovative risk assessment and resilience enhancement measures that address the challenges posed by wildfires from both technical and human-centric perspectives. This paper first reviews the impacts of wildfires on power systems and the corresponding risk assessment methods. Subsequently, a review is also conducted on measures for enhancing the multi-phase and multi-dimensional resilience of power systems in the face of wildfires (encompassing prevention, emergency response, and post-disaster recovery), critically assessing their effectiveness and inherent limitations. In response to their limitations, dynamic risk assessment frameworks in power systems are proposed, with a focus on social resilience, alongside discussions on the potential applications of emerging technologies to enhance the resilience of power systems against wildfire disasters.