Improving the resilience of the distribution system using the automation of network switches

In studies of power systems, reliability issues are not fully responsive to the assessment of the distribution network in the face of natural disasters, and studies called the resilience of distribution network are needed. Distribution network resilience studies examine the impact of large incidents with high damaging power but low repetition on the power grid, which cause a lot of damage and costs. In this study, the effect of distribution network switches automation on improving the resilience of distribution networks in the event of large faults and failures has been investigated. In this approach, first the location of the incident and the probability of the percentage of destruction of the incident site are predicted, then in different scenarios, the numbers, locations, and types of switches (remote control or manoeuvre switches) are defined and in the next step, the system reliability and resilience indicators are evaluated, and then, the system resilience diagram is examined in each scenario, and at each stage, the cost-benefit analysis is performed to evaluate the cost function. Here, the cost includes the cost of purchasing and installing switches, and benefits include costs of reliability and resilience, which ultimately significantly reduce the objective function. The proposed method is implemented on a part of the standard RBTS system.