Opportunities and challenges for smart power restoration and reconfiguration smart decisions with smart grids

Smart grids bring new opportunities but also new challenges for designing and implementing restoration and reconfiguration algorithms. The efficiency of power restoration and network reconfiguration can be improved with the deployment of ICT technologies in smart grids. Protecting, monitoring, controlling, and metering the distribution power network will benefit from high interconnectivity and interoperability among multiple devices and an efficient exploitation of available information. Moreover, artificial intelligence and data mining techniques can also have a positive contribution in that sense. Nevertheless, new restoration techniques should also take into account power quality and network stability. They should also take full advantage of the possibility to change the topology, the increase of available data, and the communications and processing capability. More efforts should be devoted to designing powerful AI techniques. Our traditional vision of power distribution networks has also to be changed. Distribution network, power restoration, network reconfiguration, smartgrid, smart grid, intelligent grid, distributed generation, CBR, heuristic, metaheuristic, IED, power meter, islanding, power quality.