Project 6: Last-Mile Problem
- Dr. Geoffrey Chua
- Dr. Fang Liu
- Dr. Di Yin
The last mile in power system restoration after a disaster is generally considered as one of the main challenges in many countries, including China and the United States. The difficulty lies in the complexity of the power network and the scale of the damage. These two countries put great effort into solving the problem by setting clear guidelines, pre-identifying responsibilities, providing an information sharing platform, speeding up the restoration process, and making the last mile recovery more cost efficient.
Despite these similarities in responding to the last mile problem, one of the fundamental differences between the two countries is whether the restoration process is under centralized or decentralized control, which results in significantly different outcomes. To illustrate the differences, we compare the outcome of the power system restoration after Typhoon Rammasun (China) in 2014 and Hurricane Sandy (USA) in 2012. Hurricane Rammasun caused a power blackout of over 90% in the provinces of China. Immediately after the typhoon, the Chinese government was able to restore electricity to every household within 18 days. On the other hand, the electric companies in the United States created a platform to share real time information about restoration, but they did not collaborate on power restoration. As a result, 20 days after Hurricane Sandy hit the United States, 10% of households were still without electricity.
The outcomes of the two response processes imply that the centralized system responds faster than the decentralized system, even though the incentives in the decentralized system are aligned and the information is shared among the electric companies. However, complaints arose in the centralized system because the government took over all decision control of the local companies and households causing unfair compensation and service. This project will study the possibility of designing a set of guidelines that will, (1) incentivize the decentralized system to collaborate on power restoration and achieve the centralized outcome, and (2) determine the payment schemes to achieve fairness in the centralized system.