Determination method for loss‐minimum configuration considering reconnection of distributed generators

In the field of electrical power system, various approaches, such as utilization of renewable energy, loss reduction, and so on, have been taken to reduce CO2 emission. So as to work toward this goal, the total number of distributed generators (DGs) using renewable energy connected into 6.6-kV distribution systems has been increasing rapidly. The DGs can reduce distribution loss by appropriate allocation. However, when a fault occurs such as distribution line fault and bank fault, DGs connecting outage sections are disconnected simultaneously. Since the simultaneous disconnection of DGs influences restoration configuration and normal configuration after the restoration, it is necessary to determine the system configuration in the normal state considering simultaneous disconnection of DGs. In this paper, the authors propose a computation method to determine the loss minimum configuration in the normal state considering reconnection of DGs after simultaneous disconnection by fault occurrence. The feature of determined loss minimum configuration is satisfying with operational constraints even if all DGs are disconnected from the system. Numerical simulations are carried out for a real-scale distribution system model with 252 sectionalizing switches (configuration candidates are 2252) and 120 DGs (total output is 38.46 MW which is 23% of total load) in order to examine the validity of the proposed algorithm. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 176(4): 7–14, 2011; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.21142