Sharif Digital Repository

This study aims at quantitatively assessing the availability indices of various substation automation systems. In order to illustrate the proposed technique, first, nine types of substation automation architectures are reviewed. The reliability block diagrams of various substation automation architectures are then developed. Subsequently, comparative studies are performed to demonstrate the most reliable architectures in comparison with the others. The results obtained by the proposed approach show the impact of repair on availability indices of the automation system. Finally, different sensitivity analyses are conducted for all architectures, where the impact of varying availability of all... 

Due to the huge amount of resources needed for implementing distribution automation systems (DAS), distribution companies (DISCOs) should develop long term plans for this project. Similarly, DISCOs have network capacity expansion (NCX) plans which specify the scheme of constructing the feeders and substations. Since considering DAS may lead to more efficient NCX plans, the planner should revise the NCX plan through the DAS planning. On the other hand, for DAS planning it is necessary to consider a NCX plan as a platform to determine the time and location for installation of automation equipment. Therefore the planner should simultaneously work on two plans, each of them affects the other. To... 

Due to the large amount of resources needed for implementing distribution automation systems (DASs), distribution companies (DISCOs) should develop long term plans for this project. Similarly, DISCOs have network capacity expansion (NCX) plans which specify the scheme of constructing the feeders and substations. Since considering DAS may lead to more efficient NCX plans, the planner should revise the NCX plan through the DAS planning. On the other hand, for DAS planning it is necessary to consider a NCX plan as a platform to determine the time and location for installation of automation equipment. Therefore the planner should simultaneously work on two plans, each of them affects the other.... 

With the expansion of electricity networks, increasing operational complexities, improved knowledge of the system operators, all with the subsidies elimination in some countries such as Iran and experiencing the real price of electricity by then, it necessitates a more reliable power to be delivered to the system customers. Power system automation is regarded as an efficient solution and the effective key to this problem. However, the great number of substations in power distribution systems has led to the fact that it is neither feasible nor economic to automate all of them. This calls for a comprehensive scheme on the placement of the distribution substations to be automated. In this... 

Meet in the middle (MITM) attack is one of the most important and applicable methods for cryptanalysis of block ciphers. In this paper, a more generalized method for MITM attack is considered. For this purpose, a notion, namely cut-set, is utilized by which several numbers of MITM attacks can be performed. However, manual investigation on these cases is time-consuming and sometimes not error-free. Therefore, a new search algorithm is also provided to obtain proper attacks in a timely manner. For examination, this new search algorithm, which could make an automated attack along with some certain ideas, is applied on HIGHT, Piccolo-128, CRAFT and AES-128 block ciphers. The least time... 

Due to the boom in world trade, port authorities are looking into ways of making existing facilities more efficient. One way to improve efficiency, increase capacity, and meet future demand is to use advanced technologies and automation in order to speed up terminal operations. In this paper, we design, analyze, and evaluate four different automated container terminal (ACT) concepts. These concepts include automated container terminals based on the use of automated guidance vehicles (AGVs), a linear motor conveyance system (LMCS), an overhead grid rail system (GR), and a high-rise automated storage and retrieval structure (AS/RS). We use future demand scenarios to design the characteristics... 

In the past decade, distribution network operators have been broadly engrossed toward automated distribution networks. The operators acknowledge network automation as an efficient investment toward a better service reliability. This paper aims to provide a new long-term cost/benefit analysis for an optimal level of distribution network automation. In the analysis, reduction in customer outage cost is considered as the benefit of implementing automation systems with capital investment, and annual operation and maintenance costs. In the Finnish regulation model, there is a special incentive based on customer outage cost reduction. As the main contribution of this paper, the impact of earth... 

Reliability of machinery and equipment in flexible manufacturing systems are among the most important issues to reduce production costs and to increase efficiency. This paper investigates the reliability of machinery in job shop production systems, where materials, parts, and other production needs are handled by automated guided vehicles (AGV). The failures time of the parallel machines in a given shop follow either an exponential or a Weibull distribution. As there is no closed-form equation to calculate the reliability of the shop in the Weibull case, a simulation approach is taken in this paper to estimate the reliability. Then, a bi-objective nonlinear optimization model is developed... 

Visual tracking has attracted a significant attention in the last few decades. The recent surge in the number of publications on tracking-related problems have made it almost impossible to follow the developments in the field. One of the reasons is that there is a lack of commonly accepted annotated data-sets and standardized evaluation protocols that would allow objective comparison of different tracking methods. To address this issue, the Visual Object Tracking (VOT) workshop was organized in conjunction with ICCV2013. Researchers from academia as well as industry were invited to participate in the first VOT2013 challenge which aimed at single-object visual trackers that do not apply... 

The study presented in this paper investigated online data loss in a substation automation system (SAS) under network faults or failures. Online data loss refers to the amount of data that become inaccessible when a failure occurs in the SAS. It is a mathematical index related to the network's topology and architecture, and the calculation of which requires knowledge of the physical characteristics of SAS elements. The elements that record data were identified, and then the online data lost due to failures in those elements were determined. Also, as a case study, a typical SAS was examined under various states of failure, and the online data loss occurring under each scenarios was calculated... 

The inclusion of smart grid features such as demand response (DR) and network automation for capacity planning of substation transformers may provide substantial monetary savings. This paper proposes an optimization model for quantification of the savings in capacity management of substation transformers over long-run. The proposed model incorporates the DR as a resource to decrease the outage cost during contingencies while considering existing switching types for load transfer between substations. The model provides optimal selection and scheduling of multistage transformer installations and their refurbishments by considering all the costs associated with them including investment,... 

Enforced hill climbing (EHC), a heuristicaa search method, has been frequently used in a number of AI planning systems. This paper presents a new form of EHC, guided enforced hill climbing (GEHC), to enhance EHC efficiency. Main feature in GEHC is an adaptive ordering function. GEHC has shown a significant improvement in EHC efficiency, especially when applied to larger problems  

Much effort has been put in defining methods, techniques, and tools for software architecture reconstruction (SAR) Software Architecture Transformation (SAT), and Software Architecture-based Development, but much less attention has been paid to what lies at the heart of architecture-based development, software architectural styles. We argue that architecture-based software development could be much more productive if centered around the concept of software architecture styles, hence the need for style recovery in the process of software architecture reconstruction. The reason behind this is generally. Furthermore, with the coherence architectural styles can bring to the process of automated... 

Distribution automation (DA) application for fault management in the electricity distribution networks is one of the main potential remedial actions to reduce customers' outage times and hence improve service reliability. As a result, various automation schemes have been developed and introduced in different countries and by different venders. The impacts of implementing a specific automation scheme on reliability indices of a given distribution system can be different from other available automation schemes. For this reason, when comparing the available automation schemes with each other or with the other reliability improvement measures, it is necessary to perform a course of reliability... 

As digital technology has developed, relays have evolved from simple electro-mechanical devices into robust microprocessor-embedded intelligent electronic devices (IEDs). Distance protection, one of the most important and sophisticated forms of substation protection, quickly and selectively detects and clears phase faults in sub-transmission and transmission lines. The installation of a substation automation system (SAS) involves implementing control, monitoring, and protection logic by programming the IEDs and providing an appropriate communication network. IEC61850 has gradually satisfied the need for a standard communication protocol so that IEDs from different manufacturers can... 

This paper presents a novel profit-based model for multistage distribution network expansion planning. In the proposed model, some capabilities of the distribution automation system are considered to achieve a plan that is more compatible with the strategic plan towards a smart distribution grid. Moreover, a method for reliability evaluation of a distribution network in the planning studies is proposed. The objective function of the planning problem is the net present value of the company's profit. The problem is solved by employing the genetic algorithm approach as a promising technique in solving the mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem. The proposed method is evaluated on an... 

Distribution automation (DA) application for fault management in the electricity distribution networks is one of the main potential remedial actions to reduce customers' outage times and hence improve service reliability. As a result, various automation schemes have been developed and introduced in different countries and by different venders. The impacts of implementing a specific automation scheme on reliability indices of a given distribution system can be different from other available automation schemes. For this reason, when comparing the available automation schemes with each other or with the other reliability improvement measures, it is necessary to perform a course of reliability... 

This paper aims to present a comprehensive technique to quantitatively assess the reliability of substation automation systems. The technique is based on the tie-sets methodology. In order to demonstrate the application of the proposed technique, a variety of substation automation architectures is first introduced. The associated reliability block diagrams as well as the exact system reliability are then given. The impacts and the degree of importance of various components on the reliability of substation automation systems are presented. Two suitable measures of importance are selected. The first is the Birnbaum's measure used to determine the bottleneck of the system reliability. The... 

Distribution automation application for fault management in the electricity distribution networks is one of the main potential remedial actions to reduce customers' outage times and hence improve service reliability. For this purpose, various automation schemes have been developed and introduced in different countries and by different venders. However, the challenge for electric utilities, especially in today's competitive electricity market, is to identify and evaluate potential reliability reinforcement schemes. Accordingly, appropriate schemes must be determined and prioritized for implementation. In this context, reliability cost/worth assessment plays an important role. A comprehensive...