Sensor Placement for Outage Identifiability in Power Distribution Networks

Accurate topology information is critical for effective operation of power distribution networks. Line outages change the operational topology of a distribution network. Hence, outage detection is an important task. Power distribution networks are operated as radial trees and are recently adopting the integration of advanced sensors to monitor the network in real time. In this paper, a dynamic-programming-based minimum cost sensor placement solution is proposed for outage identifiability. A novel formulation of the sensor placement as a cost optimization problem involving binary placement decisions is proposed, along with a dynamic programming algorithm to solve it in polynomial time. Our sensor placement solution provides a set of locations in a distribution network where sensor placement is mandatory for outage identifiability. We also extend our sensor placement optimization problem and dynamic programming algorithm to the case in which the number of measurement channels of sensors are limited. The advantage of placement strategies are that they incorporate various types of sensors, have a polynomial execution time, are cost effective and ensure outage identifiability for any arbitrary values of loads. Numerical results illustrating the proposed sensor placement solutions are presented under different scenarios for multiple feeder models including standard IEEE test feeders.