Smart grid self-healing: Functions, applications, and developments

Although the power system grid growth pace was slow, the load demand was not. Yet, there are some challenges that impeding the power grid to cope with the load pace, namely: renewable energy integration; energy efficiency; vulnerability to faults; and complexity of the power grid. Such challenges reveal the concept of smart grids (SG). In SG concept, secured, efficient, economic, and intelligent grid was sought in order to face the aforementioned challenges. One of the important tasks of an SG is self-healing. In this paper, the self-healing concept will be illustrated in the context of the SG. The self-healing functions, applications and developments will be explored. The major developments made in the transmission and distribution grid thanks to power electronics converters will be shown. Then, the employed communication technologies, measurements and software agents which can be used for taking critical SG self-healing decisions will be reviewed.