Service restoration in distribution systems with priority customers

• Grant number: 12/19615-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2012
• End date: October 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Electrical Engineering - Power Systems
• Principal Investigator: Joao Bosco Augusto London Junior
• Grantee: Douglas Henrique Pereira
• Host Institution: Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos (EESC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 11/01035-7 - Power system control and analysis, AP.TEM

Abstract

Recently a lot of papers have addressed the problem of service restoration in distribution systems, mainly because of the development and implementation of Smart Grids. An adequate Service Restoration Plan (SRP) plays a key part in improving service reliability and enhancing customers satisfaction. That is after a faulted zone has been identified and isolated by the protection system, it is necessary to obtain an adequate SRP to restore the energy to the healthy zones in the out-of-service areas. Usually, network reconfiguration methodologies developed to treat service restoration problems in large-scale distribution systems (with thousands of buses and switchers) require a lot of simplifications in the system that decrease the possibility of finding adequate SRPs. However, recently a methodology that allows the obtaining of adequate SRPs, without requiring any simplifications (i.e., considering all the system buses and switchers), even to large scale distribution systems, was proposed. The methodology combines a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) with a new data structure named Node Depth Encoding (NDE). The NDE allows an efficient computational representation of the electrical topology of distribution systems. Simulation results have shown the methodology is able to find adequate SRPs for real large-scale distributed systems. However, this methodology does not consider the existence of priority customers (such as hospitals, health centers in a general way, industries, etc.). When priority customers are in out-of-service areas, they must have priority in the SRP. On another side, when priority customers are not in out-of-service areas, the SRP cannot require a change of priority customers among feeders. In this project that methodology based on both MOEA and NDE will be extended to consider the existence of priority customers.(AU)