Heuristic based strategy for the restoration problem in electric power distribution systems

Whenever a fault occurs in a distribution network and on isolation of the fault some of the loads get disconnected and are left unsupplied. Hence service should be restored to these load points as quickly as possible through a network reconfiguration. But the restoration of supply is a large-scale combinatorial problem, which puts the control operators under pressure to find a restoration solution quickly. This paper presents a new technique, which is based on minimum number of switching operations and minimum losses. The main contribution of this paper is to convert a complicated network into a simple one, by using network reduction technique and then applying the developed algorithm for the reduced network to get an optimal configuration after the occurrence of the faults. The developed algorithm is tested on a standard system and then it is applied for a practical system.