Identifying DA Allocation by Minimizing the Overall Cost of Customer Minutes Interrupted

Smart grid activities are increasing the implementation of automated sectionalizing devices on distribution systems. Most methods for identifying the optimal distribution automation allocation (DAA) utilize general cost functions to account for the monetary impact of outages. Although these methods minimize lifetime reliability costs, they do not necessarily align with methods utilized by utility commissions and utility companies to restore power. Existing DAA approaches minimize strictly for outage, installation, and maintenance lifetime costs; however, during an outage a utility is more focused on minimizing “customer minutes interrupted” (CMI's). Most methods specifically ignore CMI's and assume utilities can address them within their generic cost function. The approach described within this manuscript identifies optimal DAA by minimizing the cost of CMI's after an outage. To align with accepted utility and commission practices for measuring the monetary impact of automated systems, the approach determines reliability costs by employing the “cost/CMI”. To account for cost variations between feeders, the approach applies the utility's expected/desired feeder values for SAIDI, CAIDI, and/or SAIFI to calculate avoided costs as defined by Berkeley National Laboratory's 2018 study. The method is easily employed with computational software. Evaluation and comparison of the approach is performed utilizing the Roy Billinton Test System.