Planning for Resilience to Hurricanes: Modeling to Generate Alternative Grid Hardening Options for Puerto Rico in Its Energy Transition

Abstract

This project investigates and analyzes Puerto Rico's electric grid's challenges as it transitions to a 100\%-renewable generation portfolio by 2050. It will also address the resilience challenges related to natural disasters, like hurricanes, that the islanded Puerto Rican electric grid encounters. To demonstrate my approach to these problems, I will be using ``GenX," an open-source, least-cost optimization-based electric sector capacity expansion planning modeling tool. By using the ``Modeling to Generate Alternatives (MGA)" feature in GenX, the model can select alternative options in the decision space which are not optimal in cost but offer certain other desirable attributes, like increased resilience. In this study, the model considers the resilience options of buried transmission lines and diesel \& solar microgrids and chooses four candidate portfolios from one hundred case runs. Then, it subjects each portfolio to 100 hurricane simulations at varying levels of wind speeds. The results show the impact of resilience options on total non-served energy.