Distribution System Restoration With Renewable Resources for Reliability Improvement Under System Uncertainties

Integration of renewable distributed generation (DG) units into distribution networks is gaining widespread popularity. However, uncertainties in generation availability associated with renewable DG units pose a major challenge. These uncertainties should be properly addressed to ensure acceptable system performance and improve customer-side reliability. In this article, the reliability assessment of distribution systems embedded with renewable DG sources has been carried out giving emphasis to system uncertainties and optimal restoration strategies. The uncertainties associated with the power output from renewable resources, time-varying load demand, stochastic prediction errors, and random fault events have been accounted for in the restoration optimization formulation for reliability evaluation. In this article, a parameter-free particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique is applied to address the complexity involved in the formulation. Moreover, a problem-specific encoding scheme is also proposed in conjunction with PSO to ensure optimality.