# Sensor Placement for Outage Identifiability in Power Distribution Networks

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a dynamic programming approach for optimal sensor placement in power distribution networks to ensure outage identifiability, improving real-time monitoring and operational reliability.

## Contribution

It formulates sensor placement as a cost optimization problem and provides a polynomial-time algorithm that is flexible, cost-effective, and independent of load variations.

## Key findings

- Effective sensor placement ensures outage detection in radial networks.
- The algorithm is polynomial-time and adaptable to various sensor types.
- Numerical tests on IEEE feeders validate the approach.

## Abstract

Accurate topology information is critical for effective operation of power distribution networks. Line outages change the operational topology of a distribution network. Hence, outage detection is an important task. Power distribution networks are operated as radial trees and are recently adopting the integration of advanced sensors to monitor the network in real time. In this paper, a dynamic-programming-based minimum cost sensor placement solution is proposed for outage identifiability. We propose a novel formulation of the sensor placement as a cost optimization problem involving binary placement decisions, and then provide an algorithm based on dynamic programming to solve it in polynomial time. The advantage of the proposed placement strategy is that it incorporates various types of sensors, is independent of time varying load statistics, has a polynomial execution time and is cost effective. Numerical results illustrating the proposed sensor placement solution are presented for multiple feeder models including standard IEEE test feeders.