Decision Aid Tool to Mitigate Quality of Service Asymmetries in Distribution Networks

This article presents a methodology to estimate the evolution of QoS indices, based on investments and maintenance costs carried out in the DN. The indices were estimated at various disaggregated levels, including the global index, 3 different QoS zones (urban, semi-urban and rural) and 278 municipalities, thereby facilitating the mitigation of QoS asymmetries by allocating investments and maintenance actions to specific regions. To achieve this objective, an optimization problem was formulated to allocate investments and maintenance costs to municipalities with higher improvement benefit-cost ratios, potentially exhibiting lower levels of QoS. This methodology was adopted by the Portuguese DSO to establish the future investments plan from 2023 to 2027. The results demonstrate estimations of good performance, considering the stochastic nature of the phenomena affecting QoS (e.g. atmospheric conditions), which are included in this study, thus developing confidence levels for the global indices.