Reconfiguration of Radial Distribution Network for Reliability Enhancement considering Renewal Energy Sources

Reliability estimation of distribution network plays an indispensible character in designing and development of the radial distribution system that operates for minimum interruption and minimum interruption cost of consumer load. The utility and consumers get in touch directly only because of distribution system. Therefore study of distribution system is of great importance. In practice, all distribution systems have radial configuration with two types of switches, named as sectionalizing switch (SS) (normally closed switch) and tie switch (normally opened switch). Any fault in distribution system can make system unreliable. Therefore, reliability enhancement of distribution system is necessary. The availability of electric supply to the consumers can be improved by network reconfiguration technique. It can be done using modeling based on customer type, Sector Customer Damage Function (SCDF) and Composite Customer Damage Function (CCDF) to compute Expected Cost of Interruption (ECOST) and Energy Not Supplied (ENS). Increased penetration of renewable plants, the paper is leaning towards analyzing the effects of Solar Photo-Voltaic (SPV) and Biomass plants as Renewable Energy Sources to enhance reliability of power system. In solar power generation, a variation in solar radiations for the whole day is also considered in reliability evolution. The work is carried out to reduce ECOST for customers. It is evaluated for different network configurations and the best configuration is strategically determined.