Simultaneous Optimization of Optical Communication Link Placement and Partitioning of Wide-Area Protection System in Smart Grids

Based on modern sensors, communication networks and computing technologies, wide-area protection system (WAPS) can acquire electrical quantities to precisely locate faults in smart grids. In WAPS, the communication network is responsible for rapidly and reliably transmitting data between a regional master station and its slave stations. The real-time data transmission is heavily dependent on the communication link (CL) placement. In addition to the rational partitioning of WAPS, the CL placement should be chosen so as to ensure the good performance of WAPS. The aim of this study is to extend the traditional partitioning of WAPS to the simultaneous optimization problem of partitioning and optical CL placement. The simultaneous optimization problem is formalized so as to minimize the construction cost of WAPS. Besides the optical CL placement and partitioning, to ensure the reliable and real-time transmission of data, the link bandwidth and cost of each optical CL is also captured in the optimization problem. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out on the IEEE 39-bus, 57-bus and 118-bus standard testing cases. The simulation results illustrate that the optical CL scheme can be non-negligible and that it will significantly influence the partitioning of WAPS.