Electrical Resilience Assessment of a Building Operating at Low Voltage

Abstract

Resilience is a concept gaining strength in power systems, microgrids and buildings. It evaluates their performance against disruptive events. The approaches mainly correspond to high-impact, low-probability events such as natural disasters and intentional attacks affecting the electrical systems infrastructure. However, resilience can encompass medium and low-impact events such as minor civil structural accidents, light faults and supply disturbances. Some resilience assessment advances are in buildings at the low-voltage (LV) level. They include vulnerability to natural disasters, reliability of supply, and service quality. These works usually use approaches independent of each other, leaving a gap between their relationship and interpretation. Then, there is a need to consolidate a resilience assessment strategy to guide the analysis of vulnerabilities and strengths in the same direction. This paper proposes a comprehensive approach to evaluate electrical resilience for buildings. It compiles quantitative strategies for studying electrical resilience, focusing on LV systems. It proposes a methodology for integrating the vulnerability of the electrical system infrastructure, the supply's continuity, and the quality of the voltage service. Its application in a university building with smart metering exposes the proposed approach's effectiveness. The results show a comprehensive resilience analysis and the possibility of extending the methodology to microgrids and LV distribution networks.

Keywords: buildings, electrical resilience, high-impact low-probability events, low-voltage, permanent-effects, service quality, supply continuity