Published Paper Details:

The development of communication networks in distribution grids, within the framework of evolving Smart grids, makes it possible to possess a significant amount of information on an entire electrical grid, for the purpose of manual or automatic operation or for making decisions in terms of maintenance and grid development. Active management and protection of distribution networks are beginning to take a foothold in utilities in the world. In this regard, Fault Location, Isolation, and Service Restoration (FLISR) scheme is a prevalent smart grid functionality for enhancing the reliability performance of a distribution system. At the high level, FLISR facilitates faster sectionalization of a distribution feeder during a failure event and reliability improvement is achieved by limiting the exposure to or duration of outage experienced by customers connected to the feeder i.e., Self-Healing. This project introduces a Heuristic Method suitable for FLISR scheme implementation: select manually operated medium voltage isolation switches are upgraded to automated and/or tele-controllable Ring Main Units (RMU). The method assigns a Reliability Value that can be readily calculated for any manual switches under consideration. The result shows that the reliability performance with RMU is most sensitive to feeders with longest length attributes and least sensitive to the feeders with lowest capacity attributes in the network.