Sharif Digital Repository

Maintenance scheduling of generating units in restructured power systems is a collaborative and interactive process between independent system operators (ISOs) and generating companies (GENCOs). The ISO should comply with GENCO maintenance preferences subject to targeted system reliability levels. This process might be multistage since the admission of all initial unit outage requests may threaten system reliability. Hence, the ISO accepts some proposals and determines alternatives for the remaining units. The GENCOs are then allowed to confirm the alternatives or revise them. In this paper the ISO problem of generating unit maintenance scheduling is tackled. The objective function is to... 

This paper investigates the main features of the PHEV centralized and decentralized charging control mechanisms, their requirements and also impacts on distribution system performance. A home-based charging control scenario as well as a coordinated charging control algorithm for the charging management of PHEVs is devised in this paper. Both the owner preferences and system operator concerns are taken into consideration in an optimization-based framework. The total network losses and charging costs are set as the constraints to the proposed optimization approach. Various aspects of the two mechanisms are discussed and comprehensively compared by their application on the IEEE 34-bus test... 

This paper addresses the midterm preventive maintenance outage scheduling problem of thermal generating units which is becoming increasingly important due to the aging of power generation fleet. In this context, a novel midterm preventive maintenance outage scheduler is proposed based on decision tree and mixed integer linear formation which explicitly considers the thermal units aging momentum in terms of failure rate. This allows the system operators to determine the thermal units' maintenance outage window based on the cost/benefit analysis of preventive maintenance tasks while optimizing the time interval between consecutive maintenance tasks. Additionally, the division of the year-long... 

Automation is acknowledged by distribution utilities as a successful investment strategy to enhance reliability and operation efficiency. However, practical approaches that can handle the complex decision-making process faced by decision makers to justify the long-term financial effects of distribution automation have remained scarce. An automated and remote-controlled sectionalizing switch play a fundamental role in an automated distribution network. This paper introduces a new optimization approach for distribution automation in terms of automated and remotely controlled sectionalizing switch placement. Mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) is utilized to model the problem. The proposed... 

This paper investigates the effects of service quality regulation on investing in distribution automation. Among different regulatory instruments for quality regulation, the Reward-Penalty Scheme (RPS) has been selected to evaluate the effect of monetary incentive on behavior of Electric Distribution Utility (EDU) for service reliability. By implementing different automation strategies, the value of enhancing reliability indices and consequently the value of rewards and penalties are calculated for each strategy. For achieving to more realistic outcome, ten years horizon is considered. Furthermore, in the calculation of reliability indices, the time varying failure rate of components is... 

The deployment of flexible ac transmission system (FACTS) devices, despite miscellaneous benefits and applications, has been restricted mainly due to their large investment costs. Accordingly, the notion of distributed FACTS (D-FACTS) was recently proposed. Distributed static series compensators (DSSCs), as a new member of D-FACTS, are directly clamped to conductors of transmission lines. The possibility of controlling the compensation rate of DSSCs from the control center affords the active control of network power flow. This paper presents a comprehensive reliability model for the DSSC. The model is then reduced and a state-space representation is extracted for a transmission line with a... 

This paper investigates the effects of service quality regulation on investing in distribution automation. Among different regulatory instruments for quality regulation, the Reward-Penalty Scheme (RPS) has been selected to evaluate the effect of monetary incentive on behavior of Electric Distribution Utility (EDU) for service reliability. By implementing different automation strategies, the value of enhancing reliability indices and consequently the value of rewards and penalties are calculated for each strategy. For achieving to more realistic outcome, ten years horizon is considered. Furthermore, in the calculation of reliability indices, the time varying failure rate of components is... 

This paper discusses various aspects of unified power flow controller (UPFC) control modes and settings and evaluates their impacts on the power system reliability. UPFC is the most versatile flexible ac transmission system device ever applied to improve the power system operation and delivery. It can control various power system parameters, such as bus voltages and line flows. The impact of UPFC control modes and settings on the power system reliability has not been addressed sufficiently yet. A power injection model is used to represent UPFC and a comprehensive method is proposed to select the optimal UPFC control mode and settings. The proposed method applies the results of a contingency... 

This paper proposes a stochastic mixed-integer programming (SMIP) model for the reliability-constrained unit commitment (RCUC) problem. The major objective of the paper is to examine both features of accuracy and efficiency of the proposed SMIP model of RCUC. The spinning reserve of generating units is considered as the only available reserve provision resource; however, the proposed formulation can be readily extended to comprise the other kind of reserve facilities. Expected load not served (ELNS) and loss of load probability (LOLP) are accommodated as the reliability constraints. Binding either or both reliability indices ensures the security of operation incorporating the stochastic... 

Increasing the social welfare and achieving real competitive markets are the main purposes of consumers participation in electricity markets. Hence, Demand Response Programs (DRPs) have been designed to consider the consumers participation. One of these programs named Emergency Demand Response Program (EDRP) is based on consumers' responses to high electricity prices and to the incentives that are paid by Independent System Operators (ISOs) in the critical hours. In this paper, a model has been proposed for EDRP participation in the Stochastic Security Constrained Unit Commitment (SCUC) program. Both the spinning reserve and the demand side reserve, which is modeled as EDRP, are taken into... 

This study presents a novel method for fault location of transmission lines by multiple fault current measurements. In contrast to conventional methods, it is proposed to utilise several current measurements, which may be far from the faulted line. The circuit equations of the network are used to express each fault current as a function of fault location. Fault location is then estimated using a least-squares estimation technique. To achieve a robust estimation of fault location, statistical hypotheses-testing is employed for identifying erroneous measurements. The method is applicable to both synchronised and unsynchronised measurements. Moreover, fault location can be estimated regardless... 

This paper investigates the main features of the PHEV centralized and decentralized charging control mechanisms, their requirements and also impacts on distribution system performance. A home-based charging control scenario as well as a coordinated charging control algorithm for the charging management of PHEVs is devised in this paper. Both the owner preferences and system operator concerns are taken into consideration in an optimization-based framework. The total network losses and charging costs are set as the constraints to the proposed optimization approach. Various aspects of the two mechanisms are discussed and comprehensively compared by their application on the IEEE 34-bus test... 

The modeling and evaluation of enormous numbers of contingencies are the most challenging impediments associated with composite power system adequacy assessment, particularly for large-scale power systems. Optimal power flow (OPF) solution, as a widely common approach, is normally employed to model and analyze each individual contingency as an independent problem. However, mathematical representations associated with diverse states are slightly different in one or a few generating units, line outages, or trivial load variations. This inherent attribute brings a promising idea to speed up the contingency evaluation procedure. In this paper, postoptimal analysis (POA), as a well-recognized... 

This paper presents a fuzzy based modified artificial bee colony (MABC) algorithm to solve discrete optimal power flow (OPF) problem that has both discrete and continuous variables considering valve point effects. The OPF problem is formulated as a multi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear problem, where optimal settings of the OPF control variables for simultaneous minimization of total fuel cost of thermal units, total emission, total real power losses, and voltage deviation are obtained. The proposed approach is applied to the OPF problem on IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 118-bus test systems. The performance and operation of the proposed approach is compared with the conventional methods. The... 

While the importance of wide area measurement system (WAMS) consisting of phasor measurement units (PMUs) is recognized, there are still unidentified applications that can be addressed with the advance of technology. Traditionally, power system operators diagnosed the fault point through the status of protective relays and circuit breakers of the protection system. In large blackouts, however, the malfunction of protection system has itself often been among the suspects of the disaster. This paper proposes an alternative fault diagnosis approach independent of the function of protection system, utilizing PMU data and bus impedance matrix (Zbus). First, the proposed method diagnoses the fault... 

This paper introduces a novel approach for power system fault diagnosis based on synchronized phasor measurements during the fault. The synchronized measurements are obtained in real time from Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and compared with offline thresholds determined by decision trees (DTs) to diagnose the fault. The DTs have already been trained offline using detailed power system analysis for different fault cases. While the traditional methods for fault diagnosis use the status of protective relays (PRs) and circuit breakers (CBs) to infer the fault section in the power system, the proposed method uses the available signals following the fault and thus can be trusted even in case of... 

In this paper, Bayesian Network (BN) is used for reliability assessment of composite power systems with emphasis on the importance of system components. A simple approach is presented to construct the BN associated with a given power system. The approach is based on the capability of the BN to learn from data which makes it possible to be applied to large power systems. The required training data is provided by state sampling using the Monte Carlo simulation. The constructed BN is then used to perform different probabilistic assessments such as ranking the criticality and importance of system components from reliability perspective. The BN is also used to compute the frequency and... 

This paper presents a novel heuristic algorithm for solving economic dispatch (ED) problems, by employing iteration particle swarm optimization with time varying acceleration coefficients (IPSO-TVAC) method. Due to the effect of valve-points and prohibited operation zones (POZs) in the generating units' cost functions, ED problem is a non-linear and non-convex optimization problem. The problem even may be more complicated if transmission losses are taken into account. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined and validated by carrying out extensive tests on three different test systems. Valve-point effects, POZs, ramp-rate constraints and transmission losses are modeled. Numerical... 

Open access to transmission networks as well as designing an efficient cost allocation method are the key points that provide free competition for participants in power market. Restructuring in power systems has created new challenges which emphasize the development and fairness of economical criteria such as pricing of different services in market environment. Besides, the charge of network usage is a controversial subject, itself. To address this problem, many methods for transmission line cost allocation have been proposed. Amongst them, MW-Mile methods are based on the extent of use concept. Inability to take various fixed together with variable imposed costs into account can be... 

Different reasons such as power system restructuring, electricity price variation in some hours of a day and growth in the fuel price, have led to more attention to demand response (DR) programmes for consumers. Two important issues in DR programmes are emergency demand response programming (EDRP) and Interruptible/Curtail able (I/C) programme that is utilised as interruptible load contracts (ILC). The EDDR is utilised to decrease the consumption in peak load or critical hours of the day. This occurs by means of customer's behaviour in response to the incentives. However, the curtailment of voluntarily loads in the critical hours considering the consumer requirements is an action that can be...