Modeling the impact of automation and control on the reliability of distribution systems

Distribution automation is a very effective means to minimize the outage durations. Automated and remotely controlled service restoration can eliminate the need to perform switching operations manually and could have a significant effect on the system reliability. In order to enable such effect to be quantitatively evaluated, this paper examines the inherent features of the control systems and describes the concepts and models which more truly reflect the behavior of the automation and control systems. Application studies on a system based on a real Swedish utility network are performed. The results of the studies are discussed and the importance of including the relevant features is demonstrated in the paper.