Sectionalizing Switch Placement in Distribution Networks Considering Switch Failure

Sectionalizing switches play a crucial role in enhancing service reliability to the end users of distribution networks. However, they might encounter failures, thereby causing interruptions in the networks. The existing switch placement models consider only the pros of switches in improving service reliability, while they fail to deem switches cons in possible failures and thus increasing system interruptions. This letter intends to show the importance of switch failure in the switch placement problem and the extent to which switch failure alters the switches allocation in a network. To do so, we develop a novel model based on mixed integer programming format to integrate the impacts of switch failure in switch placement problem. The results indicate that switch failure has considerable impact on switches allocation and demonstrate that ignoring switch failure results in overestimating the merit of switches in the placement problem.