Designing Hybrid Power Grid Networks for Equitable Access to Electricity

Equity issues stemming from unjust urban development have left marginalized communities without reliable access to critical infrastructure, including electrical systems. Addressing these inequities is essential to reduce social vulnerabilities. A significant concern is the correlation between socioeconomic attributes and power outage probabilities. Distributed energy systems offer a promising solution to enhance equitable access to electricity. This paper develops an optimization framework to minimize the correlation between socioeconomic factors, specifically per capita income and percentage of racial minorities, and power outage probabilities through the strategic placement of distributed energy systems. Using Monte Carlo simulations, multiple outage scenarios were analyzed on the IEEE 136-bus distribution network to evaluate the framework’s impact on promoting equity in electricity access. Results showed that the framework reduced correlations to statistically insignificant levels. These findings underscore the effectiveness of the proposed framework in mitigating inequities in electricity access and advancing just, equitable power distribution in urban areas.