Post-contingency power network restoration for enhanced resilience: A drone-assisted approach

After extreme events such as earthquakes or hurricanes, which can simultaneously damage communication networks and power systems, restoring power supply becomes challenging due to the strong interdependence of cyber and physical components. This paper proposes a drone-assisted framework for post-contingency service restoration to enhance system resilience, leveraging mobile resources that combine both cyber and physical capabilities (e.g., drone communication hubs and mobile power sources). Within this framework, drones are strategically assigned throughout the power grid to facilitate post-contingency communication coverage, considering a persistent service model that includes drone round trips and battery recharging. Additionally, drone-assisted communication enables a two-level event-based coordination scheme to support plug-and-play operations of mobile power sources and multi-microgrid energy sharing based on drone availability; this event-based approach can improve communication efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposed contingency response framework is demonstrated through extensive case studies.