Identification of Critical Feeders in Integrated Electricity and District Heating Networks for Decentralized Implementation of Proactive Schemes

The interaction between the power and heat sectors can expose the resilience of integrated energy networks to serious risks. Asset management plays an undeniable role in implementing resilience-constrained scheduling of integrated electricity and district heating networks (IERNs) by properly allocating budgets to critical points and adopting proactive actions. In this regard, this paper presents a multi-criteria decision-making strategy to identify critical feeders in IERNs. The power feeders constitute the core of the energy supply chain of IEHNs. To this end, the simultaneous evaluation of criteria and alternatives (SECA) approach, as a data-driven approach, is employed to systematically prioritize key feeders to implement proactive schemes locally. This approach considers three important resilience criteria, i.e., electrical and thermal load shedding rate, feeder loading margin, and voltage drop, to form the decision matrix. To evaluate the proposed data-driven structure, the developed multi-criteria decision-making strategy is applied to the modified IEEE 33-bus PDN with an 18-node district heating network. The simulation outcomes emphasize the importance of adopting a comprehensive and efficient decision-making process to optimize proactive management approaches.