A Radial Path Building Algorithm for Optimal Feeder Planning of Primary Distribution Networks Considering Reliability Assessment

摘要

Optimal feeder routing is an important part of general optimal distribution network planning. This article proposes a new algorithm for optimal feeder routing using an easy step-by-step, radial path building algorithm, ensuring minimization of the total system planning cost. Furthermore, reliability assessment is carried out to obtain the most reliable feeder routing to acquire less interrupted network structure with different feeder configurations. The proposed approach is also tested for optimal feeder routing with variations in the number of substations, which provides information on the tradeoff between optimality and reliability of the system configuration. Moreover, the concept of principle of optimality is effectively used to make the proposed approach computationally more efficient and useful. The extensive test results reflect the potential ability of the proposed approach for optimizing the network structure in power distribution networks.