Optimal placement of automated protection switches to enhance resiliency of Power Distribution Networks under climate change conditions

Abstract In recent years, the occurrence of natural disasters has significantly increased due to climate change and global warming. These disasters include very hot and prolonged summers, extremely cold winters with severe frosts, sudden and destructive floods, high-speed and devastating storms, and widespread catastrophic gusts. The effects of these weather conditions and resulting crises are rapidly escalating. These events are typically referred to as low probability and high impact events. One of the current focal points for electrical distribution companies (DISCOs) is the resilience of the power distribution network (PDN) against such events. In addition to handling typical events, the PDN needs to be able to recover as quickly as possible with minimal outage and minimum energy supply disruptions during disaster events, specifically the increasing growth of electrical load and the expansion of the network have made the control and monitoring of energy distribution more challenging. This article proposes a model for optimizing the planning of automated protection switch (APS), taking into account both the improvement of resilience of the PDN against natural disasters and network reliability at the operational, planning, and control levels. To solve this optimization problem, including the costs of energy not supplied regarding to both resiliency and reliability and protection switch costs, a binary imperial competitive algorithm (BICA) is employed. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed optimal planning method have been demonstrated through numerical studies conducted on IEEE standard 33 bus feeders.