A graph theory-based distribution feeder reconfiguration for service restoration

An electric power distribution network (PDN) carries electricity from the transmission system and delivers it to consumers at load centres through a number of power lines (branches). Switching ON and OFF of these power lines makes the power to flow in PDN. The PDN can undergo outages, which may be forced or scheduled outage. During outages, the supply of power is either partially or completely isolated from PDN to the load centres. This deficit of power supply has to be minimum in PDN. To achieve this goal, proper switching of power lines in PDN is required. This paper describes the implementation of two different graph theory-based methodologies for electric PDN. One algorithm is based on Heuristic search method, which obtains the best solution in the viewpoint of minimizing the number of switching operations and another approach applies Dijkstra's algorithm, which finds an optimal switching sequence by considering the reliability of the entire PDN even during varying load conditions. The proposed two methods are tested and evaluated on a IEEE 16-bus distribution system whose results are presented systematically.