Restoration switching analysis in the integrated architecture for distribution network operation

Distribution network restoration is a recurrent issue of interest to power industry because electric distribution grids remain vulnerable against natural disasters and customers' expectations toward the continuity of electricity service are increasing in modern society. The increasing requirement for operation efficiency has encouraged the modernization of power distribution system by implementing new technologies of control and automation and data conditioning and processing. The integrated architecture of advanced distribution and outage management systems provides situational awareness of distribution networks. Fully automated restoration takes a central role with data from the distribution state estimation for achieving the feeder loading and switching plan able to reestablish the interrupted service. In active distribution networks, restoration switching analysis moves from a multi-objective model, where operator chooses the most suitable switching plan, to a single-objective optimization model for the fully automated restoration. The numerical analysis under a real-world substation is performed in three stages taking into account, firstly, the multi-objective solution and, then, the compromise solution under load forecast and, at last, the benefits of the automatic switching operation are verified.