Reliability assessment in power distribution networks by logical and matrix operations

The reliability assessment allows the distribution utilities to make more judicious investment decisions since they can balance the technical and economic aspects of the supply quality. However, to accomplish the reliability assessment of any power distribution network it must model the cause-and-effect relation between the fault locations and the affected customers. This work aims to present a method to accomplish the reliability assessment based on logical relation and matrix operations. The proposed method is proved by resolving several examples, which demonstrate how the type and location of the protection equipment modify the reliability indexes of a specific power distribution network. Moreover, these examples will show that the proposed method may become apt at assessing the reliability of real-sized power distribution networks without demanding much computing time. Finally, it will also mention additional applications for which this method may be suitable and suggest possible improvements to it.