Toward a Synthetic Model for Distribution System Restoration and Crew Dispatch

Distribution service restoration (DSR) is critical for improving the resilience and reliability of modern distribution systems by strategically and sequentially energizing the system components and customer loads. Restoring electricity service to affected customers also requires multiple crews with different skill sets to perform multiple tasks that are procedurally interdependent with safety guaranteed. However, in existing DSR practices, switch operations and crew dispatch are scheduled separately, and their interdependence is not fully considered. As advanced technologies are enabling remote communication, control, and dispatch, utilities now desire an integrated DSR framework to achieve seamless coordination among multiple DSR tasks such as switch operation, crew dispatch, and component repair. In this paper, we introduce a synthetic model that integrates the service restoration model and the crew dispatch model based on a universal routing model. The proposed model can provide the estimated time of restoration for each load, the switching sequence for safely operating remotely/manually operated switches, and dispatch solutions for crews with different skill sets. The proposed synthetic model is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model, and its effectiveness is evaluated via the IEEE 123 bus test feeder and several large-scale test feeders (EPRI Ckt5, Ckt7, Ckt24, and IEEE 8500 node test feeder.