A Heuristic Algorithm for Effective Service Restoration Toward Distribution Networks Automation

In today's power distribution networks, usually following an outage, significant time is spent on fault locating, isolating the fault zone, and energizing upstream and downstream loads. In addition to dissatisfaction in residential customers, electricity interruption even for a few seconds, can cause huge damages in advanced industries or critical customers. Currently, the distribution systems are equipped with Manually Switches (MS) and Remote Controlled Switches (RCS). The heuristic Service Restoration (SR) algorithm of this paper is a Bi-Stage algorithm that at the first stage quickly restore energy to some loads using RCSs and in the second stage, all types of switches (MSs and RCSs) are used to complete the SR process. Here, to solve the SR problem, minimizing Energy Not Supplied (ENS) is selected as the objective function. The proposed SR algorithm was performed on a sample network in different situations. In addition to using a Bi-Stage SR algorithm to minimize ENS and re-energize customers in the shortest time after fault, taking into account the actual network conditions such as load profiles, network operation constraints also increase the attractiveness of the proposed algorithm. This algorithm can improve Distribution System Automation (DSA) by introducing a proposed control scheme. Finally, it was proved that using the proposed SR algorithm it is possible to achieve optimal and efficient solutions matching today's distribution network's needs.