Optimal distribution protection design: quality of solution and computational analysis

The fundamental goal of an electric utility is to serve its customers with a reliable and low cost power supply. To achieve this goal, utilities use v arious reliability indices to evaluate the service reliability, and priorit ize capital and maintenance expenditures. Utilities improve distribution re liability either through preventive measures or by appropriate remedial act ions in response to a disturbance. Remedial action capabilities include tho se provided by protective device response, fault locators and other sensors , and various distribution automation functions. The number, type and locat ion of the protective devices on a distribution feeder have a direct effect on the system reliability. In previous work, a binary programming problem was formulated to identify type and location of the protective devices on a distribution feeder in order to optimize reliable performance. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the practicality of such design optimization techniques through: (a) comparison of these solutions to existing utility p ractices; and (b) analysis of the computational complexity of the algorithm s. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.