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Development of a multi criteria load prioritization framework to minimize social and economic impacts during high impact low frequency events
Shanthanam, Sangar
Shanthanam, Sangar
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d26021_Shanthanam.pdf
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2026-05
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Dissertation
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Electronic dissertation
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This dissertation introduces a load prioritization approach in power distribution system during extreme events. The method is designed to minimize socioeconomic disruptions and protect vulnerable communities from disproportionate impacts. The study combines Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques and Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) to optimize the distribution of available power across various sectors during power shortages or outages. Extreme events such as natural disasters or cyber-attacks often result in severe economic losses and disproportionate impacts on vulnerable groups such as low income communities and critical age populations. This research proposes a comprehensive framework that prioritizes essential loads such as hospitals and emergency services while ensuring minimal economic impacts and vulnerable groups are protected from disproportionate impacts. The MCDM approach helps to evaluate the tradeoffs between multiple conflicting criteria such as economic loss, societal impacts and infrastructure recovery. The MILP model efficiently allocate the limited power resources based on these criteria. A comprehensive test system was developed by merging CLARC system data, socioeconomic data of garden city kansas and IEEE test system to evaluate the proposed load prioritization methodology. Various real world scenarios including natural disasters and DER penetrations are used in simulations. The results show that the proposed method reduces the impact on vulnerable populations to approximately 12%, compared with more than 33% under traditional prioritization approaches. The results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly reduces the social impacts, minimizes economic losses and prioritize power to vulnerable populations during power inadequacy events, ensuring both resilience and equity.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)-- Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
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Wichita State University
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© Copyright 2026 by Sangar Shanthanam
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