Sharif Digital Repository

In a practical power system, automating all the substations is neither affordable nor economically justifiable. On the other hand, the trend for electric power subsidies elimination in some regions, such as Iran, aggravates this situation. To enhance the cost effectiveness of distribution automation system, this paper proposes a novel applicable qualitative-quantitative method using analytical hierarchical process (AHP) to find the optimum placement of remote terminal units (RTU). Entire attempt is to contribute all the crucial technical and practical parameters related to this problem in order to find the most reliable solution. Optimum number of RTUs is determined using the concepts of... 

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 a part of the ongoing debate about competition in the electricity industry, regulators are increasingly considering performance-based regulation (PBR) as an alternative to improve the service quality. The fundamental principle behind PBR is that good performance should lead to higher profits, and poor performance should result in lower profits. A penalty-reward structure (PRS) in a PBR mechanism can enhance utility performance to align utility interests with customer's interests. During the implementation of PBR, regulators should spend or receive money to reward good performed utilities or penalised poor performed utilities, respectively. A technique is proposed, in this study, to not... 

Metropolitan areas consist of complicated systems of interconnected infrastructures that are highly interdependent. Disruption of one infrastructure may induce disruption in other interconnected ones. The results from analysis of one infrastructure as an independent system are not realistic without considering the behavior of other interconnected infrastructures. Consequently, the study of the interdependencies among critical infrastructures is important for addressing the cascading effects of a failed infrastructure on the entire network to properly model its performance and help the disaster management team in decision making. In this study, the extended Petri net and Markov chain have... 

Due to the liberalization of the electricity market and the introduction of distributed generation (DG), the importance of distribution loss allocation (LA) has increased. This paper presents a new method for distribution power LA in radial systems. The proposed method, which is based on the results of power flow and considers active and reactive power flows of lines for LA, is composed of three steps. In the first step, starting from the source nodes (i.e., the nodes whose generation is more than their load), the power loss allocated to all nodes is calculated and then the power loss allocated to the loads connected to each node is obtained. In the next step, the total power loss is... 

An inverse finite element method (IFEM) has been developed for estimation of the blank size and prediction of the strain distribution in sheet metal forming. In the inverse method the nodal coordinates in the final shape are known and their corresponding positions on the initial blank should be determined. The developed method deals with logarithmic large strains of membrane triangular elements, virtual work principle and a new approach for friction modeling. This method leads to a system of nonlinear equations which is highly sensitive to the initial guess. In order to avoid the converging problems, especially in the quasi-vertical walls, an appropriate initial guess is introduced. The... 

Due to the important role that distribution systems play in quality of power delivered to the customers, there has always been a great deal of interest in investigating different methods of efficiency enhancement for these networks. Two of these methods are Feeder Reconfiguration (FR) and Capacitor Allocation (CA); both have been widely employed to reduce losses and improve several other operational characteristics in electrical power distribution systems. As in FR process the topology of the network changes, it is necessary to change some previous settings; for instance: the capacity of capacitor banks in service in each bus, after each reconfiguration process. This is due to the fact that... 

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) have the potential to limit emissions and reduce the cost of transportation. Although wide scale adoption of plug-in vehicles is still a few years away, politicians, electric utilities, and auto companies are eagerly awaiting the opportunities that may arise from reduction of emissions and gasoline and oil consumption, new services and increased revenues, and new markets that would create new jobs. For consumers, plug-in vehicles will significantly lower operational costs when compared with traditional gasoline cars. The savings are potentially high, in average, as electricity cost mile work out to about one forth of gasoline. But it is noticeable to... 

This paper aims to quantitatively evaluate and compare the reliability impact of employing an automatic loop restoration scheme in a typical distribution system, with and without pulse closing technology. Sustained interruptions, momentary interruptions and voltage sags are the three major attributes of the service reliability that are taken into account in the reliability case studies  

This paper presents the most frequently used maintenance concerns and challenges in distribution utilities of Iran. A questionnaire is devised and distributed among the maintenance experts in more than 30 distribution utilities all over Iran and their responses have been taken under consideration in this paper. The aim is to get the most out of the successful maintenance experiences within the utilities, to find the solutions on the current common challenges on the distribution system maintenance policies, and eventually to enlighten the way on the transition to the more efficient maintenance approaches such as reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) in distribution systems  

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... 

Smart grids are envisioned to support large penetrations of electrical vehicles driven by economical and environmental signals. Nevertheless, distribution system operators are becoming concerned about distribution congestion that may occur in the network with multiple domestic plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) charging. Therefore, investigating the impacts of high PHEV penetration levels on the performance of distribution networks seems to be essential for system operators and planners. Doing so, in this paper, PHEV characteristics are precisely extracted from valid published reports and surveys. Accordingly, a comprehensive model for investigating the impacts of different PHEV... 

We propose novel techniques to find the optimal location, size, and power factor of distributed generation (DG) to achieve the maximum loss reduction for distribution networks. Determining the optimal DG location and size is achieved simultaneously using the energy loss curves technique for a pre-selected power factor that gives the best DG operation. Based on the network's total load demand, four DG sizes are selected. They are used to form energy loss curves for each bus and then for determining the optimal DG options. The study shows that by defining the energy loss minimization as the objective function, the time-varying load demand significantly affects the sizing of DG resources in... 

Identifying clusters is an important aspect of analyzing large datasets. Clustering algorithms classically require access to the complete dataset. However, as huge amounts of data are increasingly originating from multiple, dispersed sources in distributed systems, alternative solutions are required. Furthermore, data and network dynamicity in a distributed setting demand adaptable clustering solutions that offer accurate clustering models at a reasonable pace. In this paper, we propose GoScan, a fully decentralized density-based clustering algorithm which is capable of clustering dynamic and distributed datasets without requiring central control or message flooding. We identify two major... 

This paper presents a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based fuzzy stochastic long term approach for determining optimum location and size of distributed energy resources (DERs). The Monte Carlo simulation method is used to model the uncertainties associated with long-term load forecasting. A proper combination of several objectives is considered in the objective function. Reduction of loss and power purchased from the electricity market, loss reduction in peak load level, and reduction in voltage deviation are simultaneously considered as the objective functions. At first these objectives are fuzzified and designed to be comparable with each other, then they are introduced to a PSO... 

Despite the economic and environmental advantages of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), the increased utilization of PHEVs brings up new concerns for power distribution system decision makers. Impacts of PHEVs on distribution networks, although have been proven to be noticeable, have not been thoroughly investigated for future years. In this paper, a comprehensive model is proposed to study the PHEV impacts on residential distribution systems. In so doing, PHEV fundamental characteristics, i.e., PHEV battery capacity, PHEV state of charge (SOC), and PHEV energy consumption in daily trips, are accurately modeled. As some of these effective characteristics depend on vehicle owner's... 

Along with the increasing demand for electrical power, distributed generations (DGs) have so far found their pivotal roles in the restructured environment of power distribution systems. As an indispensable step toward a more reliable power system, the DGs optimal allocation strategy, deemed to be the most techno-economically efficient scheme, comes to the play and is profoundly taken under concentration in this study. This paper devises a comprehensive multi-objective (MO) optimization approach by which all the crucial and maybe contradictory aspects of great influence in the placement process can be accounted for. Total imposed costs, total network losses, customer outage costs as well as... 

Under smart grid environment, islanding detection plays an important role in reliable operation of distributed generation (DG) units. In this paper an intelligent-based islanding detection algorithm for PV and DFIG units is proposed. Decision tree algorithm is used to classify islanding detection instances. This algorithm is rapid, simple, intelligible and easy to interpret. The error rate of this method is reduced by Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost) technique. The proposed method is tested on a distribution system including PV, DFIG and synchronous generator. Probable events in the system are simulated under diverse operating states to generate classification data set. First and second order... 

Recently, there has been a growing attention in frequent itemset mining in distributed systems. In this paper, we present an algorithm to extract frequent itemsets from large distributed datasets. Our algorithm uses gossip as the communication mechanism and does not rely on any central node. In gossip based communication, nodes repeatedly select other random nodes in the system, and exchange information with them. Our algorithm proceeds in rounds and provides all nodes with the required support counts of itemsets, such that each node is able to extract the global frequent itemsets. For local iteration and generation of candidate itemsets, a trie data structure is used, which facilitates the... 

Islanding detection methods are divided into three main groups as remote, active and passive. Although passive schemes have larger Non Detection Zones (NDZ) relative to other schemes, they are more used in utilities due to their low costs and less PQ problems than other schemes. Passive Schemes are based on the measurements of passive system parameters. These parameters are measured at the point of common coupling (PCC). A new approach in passive techniques is the use of data-mining to classify the system parameters. In this paper, massive indices are collected by simulation of a practical distribution system in PSCAD/EMTP environment. These indices include voltage, frequency, current,...