Power Distribution Systems Optimal Outage Restoration with Miscoordination Detection

Distribution networks are susceptible to de-energizing many customers during an outage event. Through distribution network reconfiguration (DNR) techniques, outage events can be partially or entirely restored by rerouting power to customers in a new configuration that also isolates the faulted string. To improve reliability indices, utilities have been deploying many reclosers per feeder, increasing the chances for protection miscoordination. Based on that, it is crucial that the restoration solution not only finds an optimal switching configuration to re-energize customers but also identifies miscoordinations in the system to narrow the faulted region to the smallest string possible. This paper presents a two-stage distribution systems outage restoration solution. Its novelty integrates a set of logic to properly localize the faulted area while identifying potential miscoordinations between reclosers to then improve the optimal outage restoration benefit. The restoration is computed as a Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO) based on a Mixed-Integer Convex Programming (MICP) model that minimizes unserved customers and switching maneuvers while maintaining de-energized the faulted area, providing the appropriated switching control sequence (SCS) to achieve the optimal set of open and closed switches. The validation is made in a realistic distribution systems model where different outage locations and miscoordination conditions are considered.