Practical aspects of distribution automation in normal and emergency conditions

In this study, the practical aspects of the real-time analysis and control of distribution systems in normal and emergency conditions are presented. A load flow algorithm based on loop currents, which is numerically more stable and would require a smaller number of iterations, is considered in distribution systems calculations. In order to obtain an optimal solution within a reasonable time, the problem is decomposed into feeder reconfiguration and volt/VAr optimization subproblems and uses an iterative process between these two subproblems. For feeder reconfiguration, an efficient procedure based on a closed loop resistive scheme which utilizes fast branch removal is proposed. For volt/VAr optimization, a procedure based on the gradient search is developed. The proposed software is devised for interaction with human operators which will provide advice in real-time normal and emergency practices