Start-up sequence of generators in power system restoration avoiding the backtracking algorithm

Generator start-up sequence is critical to power system restoration. A new algorithm to optimize the start-up sequence of generators based on Dijkstra method is proposed in this paper. First, a combined weight is proposed for the Dijkstra method to balance various optimization objects. Based on the modified weights, a priority index considering the branch weight, generator start-up requirement and ramping rate is proposed to optimize the generator start-up sequence. Second, we analyze the backtracking algorithm in detail and found its limitation and disadvantages, which leads a large amount of calculation and start-up failure. A new algorithm to calculate the start-up sequence is proposed. It can avoid the repetition calculation of Dijkstra and reduce the computation cost by avoiding backtracking. Finally, the IEEE 30-Bus system and Guangdong power grid system are used to validate the proposed algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed method is efficiency and it can decrease the restoration time significantly.