Sharif Digital Repository

Existing real-time pricing (RTP) schemes charge the whole customer's consumption at one highly volatile time varying price, which, in turn, imposes financial risk to participating customers. This paper presents a two-part RTP scheme aiming at efficient distribution system operation while mitigating customers' risk level imposed by volatile RTP prices. Our proposed RTP scheme offers two different RTP price signals. The first RTP price signal is used to charge customer's consumption up to its customer baseline load (CBL) which presents customer's consumption in the absence of RTP signals. The second RTP price signal is announced a day ahead of the actual operation, and can be updated in real... 

Trying to find the most efficient and cost-effective decisions on the maintenance of different component types in power distribution systems is an increasingly challenging concern largely driven by the current financial constraints in distribution utilities worldwide. In regard to deal with this challenge, the paper presents a practical application of the Delphi method and the Modified Analytical Hierarchical Process (MAHP) that can be used to find the most critical component types of the system in order to assist in accordingly allocating the available maintenance budget. The proposed approach involves the experience and knowledge held by experts and the historical empirical performance... 

Nowadays, location of distribution centers integrated with inventory or transportation decision play an important role in optimizing supply chain management. Location-inventory models analyze the location and inventory policies in distribution network, simultaneously. Developing location-inventory models under fuzzy environment can enrich the model, and this is our approach in this article. We consider the demand as a fuzzy variable and formulate the problem using credibility theory in order to locate distribution centers (DCs) as well as determining inventory levels in DCs. The derived model belongs to nonlinear mixed integer programming problems, and we presented a genetic algorithm to... 

This article indicates the accurate method for load level calculation to solve the power flow problem when capacitor reactive power is involved. Using the correct method causes some changes in the results and conclusion stated in the discussed paper on optimal reconfiguration and capacitor placement in radial distribution systems  

To tackle the air pollution issues, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) are proposed as an appropriate solution. Charging a large amount of PHEV batteries, if not controlled, would have negative impacts on the distribution system. The control process of charging of these vehicles can be centralized in parking lots that may provide a chance for better coordination than the individual charging in houses. In this paper, an optimization-based approach is proposed to determine the optimum PHEV parking capacities in candidate nodes of the distribution system. In so doing, a profile for charging and discharging of PHEVs is developed in order to flatten the network load profile. Then, this... 

This paper presents a stochastic framework to properly involve the uncertainties associated with demand in distribution system restoration (DSR) problem. To reach this goal, these uncertainties are represented as probabilistic scenarios corresponding to different load levels. Subsequently, the associated stochastic optimization problem is formulated such that it can be readily solved using dynamic programming approach. Moreover, a clustering technique is presented that enables the dynamic programming approach to find near-optimal solutions for the stochastic load restoration problem with reasonable computational effort. The proposed framework is implemented on a real-world test system, and... 

To achieve economic stability, distribution Company as an economic institution should be managed by various processes. In this way, knowledge of different processes is the first step. Furthermore, expectations, outputs, requirement data, and sub-processes should be extracted and determined. Accordingly, to assign the performance responsibility of each process, the decision making points must be introduced and, the deviation or change in set-points should be investigated into processes. Also, the performance of processes could be monitored by introducing of the sub-indictors. In this study, a practical method is presented for monitoring of reliability and power loss indices from viewpoint... 

The main motivation of this study is to address the challenges due to high penetration of renewable distributed energy resources (DERs) and efficiently benefit from DERs in distribution system planning (DSP). This paper considers a decentralized enhanced platform for DSP which is coordinated with bulk power system planning (PSP) to keep the optimality and security of the whole power system. In the proposed coordinated approach, distribution system operators (DSOs) plan and operate DERs to upgrade their local distribution areas (LDAs), supply forecasting local load growth, and avoid or defer costly generation and transmission expansion planning at the bulk power system. The proposed DSP model... 

This paper aims at proposing a mixed-integer linear formulation to incorporate reliability-oriented costs into the expansion planning model of electricity distribution networks. In this respect, revenue lost associated with the undelivered energy caused by network interruptions as well as costs incurred by the widely used reward-penalty regulations is considered as the major reliability-related costs from distribution companies point of view. A set of mixed-integer linear equations is proposed to calculate the most common distribution system reliability indices, i.e., expected energy not served, system average interruption frequency index, and system average interruption duration index. It... 

In this paper a new framework for scheduling of available resources in the distribution networks is developed. In this respect attempts are focused on interactions between charging/discharging profiles of electric vehicles (EVs) and output power of distributed generation units. To reach this goal, the proposed framework is designed as a two-stage optimization procedure. In the first stage, the charging/discharging schedules of EVs are extracted running a linear programing optimization problem taking into account the EV users' constraints and requirements. The usage profiles of the DG units, strategy of buying electricity from the market and also the final charging/discharging patterns of the... 

Increasing rate of renewable energy sources (RESs) integration in the distribution system and development of multi-microgrids (MMG) structures have changed the operational condition of power grids. In this context, the stochastic and intermittent nature of the RESs has increased the need for ramp up power to balance the supply and demand when electricity generation of these resources drops. Moreover, bulk power generation units, which conventionally have the possibility to provide flexibility ramp, would face lack of financial justification for expansion and operation in a system with high rate penetration of RESs. Therefore, distribution system operators (DSOs) should rely on local... 

Reliability cost is considered as an inevitable criterion in expansion planning studies of distribution systems. However, nonlinear expressions of reliability indices aggravate complexity of planning studies. To address this issue, this letter proposes a novel method to linearize mathematical model of the reliability-based distribution expansion planning problem. Using this variant of reliability indices, reliability costs can easily be involved in mixed-integer linear programming model of distribution expansion planning. Validity of the derived expressions is tested by simulation results. © 1969-2012 IEEE  

In this paper, a two-stage charging management framework is proposed to exploit the potential flexibility of Electric Vehicles (EVs). The aim is to reduce drastic variations in distribution system net load caused by integration of intermittent renewable distributed generation (DG) units. In the first stage, a home-based charging method is formulated in which the desired charging schedule of EVs is obtained by minimizing the cost of energy taking into account owners' preferences. The attained charging schedules are then announced to EVs Coordinator Agent (ECA) which, as the second stage, applies an LP optimization to reduce the cost of ramp provision. Moreover, an incentive scheme is... 

A significant share of losses in power systems occurs in distribution network due to lower voltages and longer lines. On top of that, unbalanced operation causes additional losses in these networks. In recent years with the development of distributed generation connected to the distribution grid, the concern over frequency and intensity of unbalanced operation has risen. Reconfiguration of these distribution networks plays a significant role in power loss minimization and voltage quality enhancement. The uncertainty regarding grid-connected DG resources and net loads are among the critical factors that must be taken into account. To do so, in this paper a novel Fuzzy-based reconfiguration... 

This paper presents a mathematical model for simultaneous deployment of protective devices (PDs) and controlling devices (CDs) in distribution networks. The PDs include fuses and reclosers and the CDs are remote controlled switches (RCSs) and manual switches (MSs). The model is to minimize equipment costs as well as sustained and momentary interruption costs. It considers the coordination of fuses and reclosers during temporary faults involving fuse saving and fuse blowing schemes. The model is in mixed integer programming (MIP) fashion which can be effectively solved with available solvers. The performance of the proposed model is verified through applying it to Bus 4 of Roy Billinton test... 

This paper presents a mathematical model for simultaneous deployment of protective devices (PDs) and controlling devices (CDs) in distribution networks. The PDs include fuses and reclosers and the CDs are remote controlled switches (RCSs) and manual switches (MSs). The model is to minimize equipment costs as well as sustained and momentary interruption costs. It considers the coordination of fuses and reclosers during temporary faults involving fuse saving and fuse blowing schemes. The model is in mixed integer programming (MIP) fashion which can be effectively solved with available solvers. The performance of the proposed model is verified through applying it to Bus 4 of Roy Billinton test... 

These days, considering the importance of reliability in industries, utilities’ role for preparing high levels of reliability becomes more important. This can be done by adding numbers of switches and Tie switches which impose high expenses to system. These expenditures should be provided by customers. Level of reliability in different points of network is different. So customers which pay more, receive higher level of reliability. If a customer raises its payment, utility change the location of switches in order to raise level of reliability of that customer. all customers change their payment and then utility fixes the switches at a point that all customers reach their favorable... 

In power distribution systems, sometimes, system reliability indices are available, where some components' reliability parameters are unknown. This letter presents the inverse reliability evaluation (IRE) problem in radial distribution systems to find unknown components' parameters from the known system reliability indices. To this end, a nonlinear system of equations is presented and solved. The solutions are analyzed in the RBTS bus 2 to verify the applicability of the proposed approach and to show the importance of the IRE problem. © 1969-2012 IEEE  

Grid computing is a type of parallel and distributed system that provides the possibility of sharing, choosing and collecting the autonomous resources (such as computer, software, databases, and equipments) that are distributed geographically. Resource discovery is one of the key subjects in distributed systems and especially Grids. We should consider that Grid consists of different applications that each of them consist of different hardware and software resources, therefore recognizing these resources is important in a Grid system. Classical approaches to Grid resource discovery are either centralized or hierarchical [1] (and will maybe prove inefficient as the scale of Grid systems... 

Restructuring and privatization in power systems have resulted in a fundamental transition of conventional distribution systems into modern multi-agent systems. In these structures, each agent of the distribution system would independently operate its local resources. In this regard, uncertainties associated with load demands and renewable energy sources could challenge the operational scheduling conducted by each agent. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a distributed operational management for multi-agent distribution systems taking into account the uncertainties of each agent. The developed framework relies on alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to coordinate the...