A system and method of determining priorities for restoration of power in a power distribution system includes collecting customer prioritization data for a set of customers. An inconvenience factor is determined from the customer prioritization data for each customer. A zone restoration factor is then determined from the inconvenience factor for each customer. The inconvenience factor takes into account the estimated outage time, the customer's back-up time, the willingness of the customer to use back-up devices, and customer's priority for the estimated outage time.