New analytical method for analysing the effectiveness of infrastructure reinforcement in electric power distribution systems

Abstract Technical problems are emerging in electric power distribution systems caused by the recent widespread deployment of new technologies of load, as the plug-in electric vehicles, and generation, as the photovoltaic generators. This fact has increased the volume of studies to evaluate the effectiveness of solutions based on infrastructure reinforcement. In this context, this work proposes an analytical method to update values of voltage magnitude in distribution systems when transformers and/or conductors are replaced. This analytical formulation can be implemented in spreadsheets for single-case analyses or it can be integrated in more-complex approaches, which demand multiple solutions, such as in optimization-based or Monte Carlo-based approaches. For the more-complex approaches the main objective is to speed up the process, as it is not necessary to run several power flows. In this work, the analytical formulation is integrated into a Monte Carlo-based process with two objectives: (a) to supply a wide-scale assessment of reinforcements to increase the electric vehicles hosting capacity in low voltage distribution systems analysing 25,000 real LV systems of a local utility; (b) to supply a systematic and wide validation of the analytical formulation. The results showed that it speeds up the process keeping relatively high accuracy.