Electrical performance estimation of distribution networks considering voltage level measurements

This paper proposes a new probabilistic method to evaluate power distribution electrical performance. Electrical performance is assumed to be the evaluation of network congestion parameters, losses and voltage level. The motivation of this work is to allow other utilizations of compulsory voltage measurement data than indices control. Typical load profile values are discretized according to its occurrence probabilities within each interval (discrete probability density function). The electrical performance estimation is formulated as a multiobjective optimisation problem where the objective functions correspond to an evaluation of occurrence probability, and also correspond to a proximity evaluation of calculated voltage levels with values obtained by measurement (goal programming). The optimisation formulation considers feeder output power and voltage level measurement in any point of a MV and/or LV circuit as restriction parameters. Radial network reduction procedures to substantially reduce Decision Domain and network expansion procedures to rebuild it are proposed. Specific heuristics were also developed to generate a-priori feasible candidate solutions combining unbalanced and diversification load values. In order to adequately apply these heuristics, a Metaheuristic Evolutionary Method is proposed and applied. Feasible solutions are classified according to Dominance Ranking algorithm, so that electrical performance is obtained for each dominance frontier.