Reliability evaluation of multiple substations with distribution networks

Traditionally, reliability evaluations for substation configurations and distribution networks are performed separately and substation reliability evaluation only focuses on a single substation. This paper presents a technique to assess the reliability of multiple substations with associated distribution networks. Based on Markov modeling, a clustering approach, a linear programming algorithm and the state enumeration method, the proposed technique has many attractive features, including the capability to handle both radial and looped networks, dependent and cascading failures, different switching actions, various failure modes, equipment capacity limits, and avoidance of network connectivity checking for outage events. A case study using an actual utility example is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented technique.