Power System Restoration Using Heuristic Search

Power System Restoration Using Heuristic Search Abstract Due to the economic and reliability considerations, power system restoration attracts more and more attention. Much research has been carried out in this field so far, including black-start sequence, network reconfiguration, and load restoration strategy. This research is mainly focused on the load restoration for the distribution system using the heuristic search algorithm. The basic goal of distribution system restoration is to resume the power supply to the load points in the distribution system in the presence of system faults. Generally, the restoration problem is a non-linear optimization problem. Several factors are involved in this optimization problem. It is necessary to keep both the current and voltage within acceptable ranges, the power balance should also be maintained, and the radial network structure of the distribution system must be maintained, etc. The proposed restoration approach can effectively isolate the fault and restore as much load as possible after the fault occurs in the distribution system. The proposed algorithm is to maximize the load restored during the restoration process and minimize the number of switching operations at the same time. A power flow is performed to guarantee the proposed optimal restoration strategy does not violate all the operational constraints. A case study is performed on the modified IEEE 37-node distribution system, and some simulation results are given to illustrate the proposed algorithm