OPTIMIZATION OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE IN THE ELECTRIC SECTOR

Abstract

The electric power industry is facing increasing challenges, prompting utilities to adopt diverse strategies to improve service efficiencies and meet regulatory requirements. In this context, the service order service sector, especially emergency ones, stands out due to its high cost and the criticality associated with the nature and consequences of these services. This study aims to analyze the critical factors that influence the efficiency in the execution of these services, using mathematical modeling techniques, specifically the Vehicle Routing Problem (PRV). The objective was to prepare a representation that would reproduce the essential characteristics of the dispatch process, working with decision criteria at the moment when emergency calls arise to serve the concessionaires' teams when there is already a pre-established route with scheduled commercial orders. The central focus of the study lies in the analysis of two decision criteria: the Emergency Waiting Time ( ) and the Commercial Lead Time ( ). The methodology adopted involves the application of Hierarchical Process Analysis (AHP) as a multicriteria approach to classify the alternatives. The modeling developed, together with the classification of alternative solutions, highlights the importance of considering waiting time in service decisions, through case studies in an emergency scenario with real data from an electricity utility. From the results presented, it was possible to envision a decision-making context that includes a compromise between the impact caused by the delay in commercial orders and the urgency of providing emergency services, both measured with the waiting time costs of each type of service.  The calculations show that prioritizing the emergency order is not always the ideal choice, as there are situations in which the weighting reveals that the cost of delaying the commercial order is greater than that of delaying the emergency order. Thus, the practical results indicate the effectiveness of combining the AHP methodology with PRV in the electricity distribution sector. In this way, it was concluded that the approach is very promising for practical contexts, allowing the decision-maker possibilities for analysis in order to weigh up their subjective choices defined a priori.