Coordinated Restoration Method for Electric Buses and Network Reconfigurations in Distribution Systems Under Extreme Events

Distribution systems are facing challenges in serving lifeline loads after extreme events. Network reconfiguration is a traditional and practical method for power supply restoration, which has strong but inflexible power transfer capabilities influenced by network topology. Multiple failures of utility power under extreme events will further limit the efficiency of network reconfiguration. Electric buses (EBs) can be utilized to achieve power supply considering their discharging capabilities as mobile storage devices. However, the mobility of EBs and the influences of transport systems must be carefully considered to enhance the resilience of distribution systems. Reconfiguration and EBs are complementary in terms of recovery capabilities and location flexibility, and more important loads can be recovered by the coordination between EBs and network reconfiguration. This paper proposes a coordinated restoration method for EBs and reconfigurations considering the influences of transport systems. The post-disaster restoration problem is formulated as a bi-level model, in which the network topology is optimized in the upper-level aiming at maximizing restoration loads through the main grid and EBs, while the traffic paths of all EBs are optimized with the goal of maximizing the restoration loads by the EBs in the lower-level considering time consumption and energy consumption during movement. The PSO and a genetic algorithm are used to solve the proposed bi-level optimization problem. Simulation studies are performed to verify the superiority of the proposed method.