Controlled Partitioning of a Power Network Considering Real and Reactive Power Balance

In response to disturbances, a self-healing system reconfiguration that splits a power network into self-sufficient islands can stop the propagation of disturbances and avoid cascading events. This paper proposes an area partitioning algorithm that minimizes both real and reactive power imbalance between generation and load within islands. The proposed algorithm is a smart grid technology that applies a highly efficient multilevel multi-objective graph partitioning technique. Thus, it is applicable to very large power grids. The proposed algorithm has been simulated on a 200- and a 22,000-bus test systems. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm improves the voltage profile of an island after the system reconfiguration compared with the algorithm that only considers real power balance. In doing so, the algorithm maintains the computational efficiency.

I. Introduction

Recent blackouts in North America, Europe, and other regions in the world highlight the need to develop smart power networks with self-healing features that could respond to vulnerable operating conditions and prevent catastrophic outages. A self-healing smart grid, which has better situational awareness and autonomous control capabilities against cascaded events, has been envisioned by the U.S. Department of Energy [1]. The ability to “self-heal” by anticipating and responding to system disturbances is an important characteristic of the smart grid in the future [2].