Power system restoration planning and some key issues

Improving the effectiveness of power system restoration planning becomes more important, since a higher NERC standard will be implemented in the near future. Standard EOP-005-2 concerns about the increased risk of large-scale system blackout due to the increased degree of uncertainty, as a very likely consequence of dynamic market activities, integration of large-scale less-dispatchable energy resources and other factors threatening the power system security. This paper presents a discussion of some of the important planning issues for power system restoration following a large-scale blackout. These issues were raised from several system restoration planning projects completed by the authors for several utility companies in Central United States and South China. Current practices at these companies are summarized. In addition, some bottleneck problems in effective restoration planning and possible solutions are suggested.