  Quick and reliable power system restoration is critically important after
natural disasters or other sudden threats, such as cyber-attacks. Leveraging
renewable resources in system restoration shortens recovery times, resulting in
prevented life-loss and avoided economic-loss, and improves the resilience of
the entire grid. However, it is not a common practice today; the inherent
variability of these resources represents a challenge for a streamlined
restoration process. This paper presents a prioritized method - starting with
renewable generator units then lowering priority to conventional units - to
plan the operational schedule of a power system during the restoration process.
The goal is to achieve a well balanced system in the presence of significant
renewable penetration. Validation and benchmarking experiments were performed
on a customized version of the RTS-GMLC test system using six months out of
year-long data, tested through hourly simulations. After evaluating the
performance and computational costs, this method proved faster than common
approaches: a MILP Unit Commitment algorithm, widely used today, and an
"enable-and-try" algorithm. In summary, herein a more convenient method is
provided to be utilized during time-sensitive restoration, as an online
operation-planning aid.
