An incident based connectivity trace system for distribution network: algorithm and implementation

Accurate reliability information is essential to reliability analysis and plays an important role in the operation and management of power systems. In the past, reliability information was gathered manually, a process which was susceptible to mistakes. Recently, great progress in the field of powerful computers, relational databases and AM/FM/GIS systems has offered valuable opportunity to improve this situation. The authors have developed a reliability report system for a US utility (NYSEG), in which they use a new advanced approach the incremental trace algorithm to automatically gather and compute the reliability information from network topology, switching history and customer information. This new approach has the following notable features: (i) it provide correct and consistent information that overcomes the drawbacks of the conventional trace approach; (ii) it is able to collect incident-based information; (iii) it is able to trace network connectivity related to each switching action; and (iv) it is faster than the conventional trace approach. This reliability reporting system was developed under the Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 environment. It has been embedded into the NYSEG trouble management environment and operated at the NYSEG reliability reporting department with satisfactory performance.