Reliability-oriented Component Criticality Analysis of Distribution Systems Based on Graph Theory

Severe power outages of distribution systems are usually first caused by the failure of a single component. Hence the analysis of critical components is very important for the reliable operation of distribution systems. This paper proposed a reliability-oriented component criticality analysis method for distribution systems based on graph theory. Specifically, a framework of analyzing the component criticality is proposed firstly based on the Monte Carlo simulation. The sensitivity of distribution system reliability indices to the fault parameters of vulnerable components is used to formulate the component criticality indices. Then, combining with the distribution system graph model, the topology structure of distribution systems is converted into a graph model. The zone partitioning and minimal path searching is applied to access the reliability-oriented criticality of components. Finally, the proposed method is applied to Roy Billinton Test System (RBTS) bus2 to validate the effectiveness of our proposed method.