Developing and Evaluating Alternative Network Architectures

Western Power’s distribution network has typically grown over time in a somewhat ad-hoc manner with the focus of design on local expansion rather than global optimisation. Currently, there are large portions of the distribution network assets in rural regions that are nearing end of life and will need to be replaced in the near future. This provides an opportunity for Western Power to redesign the routing of the network based on the knowledge of all existing customer locations. Previous work towards optimising the rural distribution network has identified a potential financial benefit through the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) to determine an optimal path. The primary objectives for this project are to expand and improve upon the current model for optimising the rural distribution network, and to investigate the transition to alternate network architectures. The benefits in achieving the objectives include a further reduction in network asset investment, a more accurate model of the rural distribution network by the consideration of additional constraints, and evidence of the efficacy of distributed technology such as stand-alone power systems (SPS).