Sizing of Movable Energy Resources for Service Restoration and Reliability Enhancement

TL;DR

This paper presents a two-stage method combining network reconfiguration and movable energy resources to optimize service restoration and reliability in power distribution systems during extreme events.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-stage strategy integrating Monte Carlo simulations, network reconfiguration, and route optimization to determine minimal MER sizes for restoring power after contingencies.

Findings

Network reconfiguration reduces MER size requirements.

The method effectively restores power in IEEE test feeders.

MER deployment strategies improve reliability during outages.

Abstract

The frequency of extreme events (e.g., hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods) and man-made attacks (cyber and physical attacks) has increased dramatically in recent years. These events have severely impacted power systems ranging from long outage times to major equipment (e.g., substations, transmission lines, power plants, and distribution system) destruction. Distribution system failures and outages are major contributors to power supply interruptions. Network reconfiguration and movable energy resources (MERs) can play a vital role in supplying loads during and after contingencies. This paper proposes a two-stage strategy to determine the minimum sizes of MERs with network reconfiguration for distribution service restoration and supplying local and isolated loads. Sequential Monte Carlo simulations are used to model the outages of distribution system components. After a contingency, the first stage determines the network reconfiguration based on the spanning tree search algorithm. In the second stage, if some system loads cannot be fed by network reconfiguration, MERs are deployed and the optimal routes to reach isolated areas are determined based on the DSPA. The traveling time obtained from the DSPA is incorporated with the proposed sequential Monte Carlo simulation-based approach to determine the sizes of MERs. The proposed method is applied on several distribution systems including the IEEE-13 and IEEE-123 node test feeders. The results show that network reconfiguration can reduce the required sizes of MERs to supply isolated areas.