Reclosers to Self-Healing schemes in distribution networks: A techno-economic assessment

A methodology to assess the economic benefits of deploying reclosers in overhead distribution networks allowing Self-Healing strategies is advanced in this work. The developed methodology comprises a technical assessment of the service restoration feasibility through network reconfiguration and an economic assessment based on a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) over the equipment's life cycle. The economic benefit is assessed opposing the capital and the operational expenditures (CAPEX, OPEX) against the savings due to the reduction with the cost of energy not supplied (CENS). Additionally, penalties reduction or incentives increase are considered due to the incentive to quality of service (IQS), as well as the reduction in the total compensation (TC) to customers due to the violation of individual indices. A case study to validate the methodology is performed on a real distribution network in Portugal, defining the optimal number and location of reclosers according to reliability improvement and investment cost effectiveness.