Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

One of the most important issues in the smart grid is to quantitatively assess the impacts of distributed energy resources (DER) on the distribution system reliability. Solar cells (SCs) as developing DERs are normally placed close to the load centers. In this paper, a new algorithm is developed to evaluate distribution system reliability, considering SCs in the vicinity of the end-users. The probabilistic nature of the demand and SC power output are investigated to solve challenges of integrating these intermittent resources with the distribution system. In a smart home, to handle the variation of SC generation, solar load controller (SLC) is utilized to match load and generation of SCs... 

In distribution system planning studies, reliability evaluation is performed during optimization procedure to calculate the interruption cost, DISCO's income and to check the viability of constraints related to reliability indices. In each iteration of the optimization algorithm a special plan is evaluated that is different from other plans. So the configuration and specification of the network which is one of the input information for reliability evaluation is changing continuously that makes difficulties for this evaluation. To solve these difficulties, this paper presents a systematic method for reliability evaluation in distribution planning studies. The proposed approach can be... 

In the past decades, remote control switches have been broadly integrated into distribution systems to achieve a certain level of service reliability. To take utmost benefits of them, a cost-benefit analysis should be conducted. In this regard, the budget restriction plays a crucial role in remote control switch placement. This paper is aimed at proposing a model to determine the optimal number and location of remote control switches in a distribution system. As the main contribution of the paper, the model is developed in multistage planning format to address the issue of budget limitation. To this end, the model is formulated in mixed integer linear programming format, which tries to... 

An efficient method for optimal allocation of wavelengths in a hybrid dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing system, carrying both quantum and classical data, is proposed. The transmission of quantum bits alongside intense classical signals on the same fiber faces major challenges arising from the background noise generated by classical channels. Raman scattering, in particular, is shown to have detrimental effects on the performance of quantum key distribution systems. Here, by using a nearly optimal wavelength allocation technique, we minimize the Raman induced background noise on quantum channels, hence maximize the achievable secret key generation rate for quantum channels. It turns out... 

This paper proposes a hierarchical outage management scheme to enhance the resilience of a smart distribution system comprised of multi-microgrids against unexpected disaster events. In this regard, after identifying the main features and requirements for a resilient outage management scheme, an appropriate framework is devised and the roles and tasks of different management entities in a multi-microgrids system are introduced. Based on this framework, the microgrids schedule their available resources in the first stage using a novel model predictive control-based algorithm. In the second stage, distribution system operator coordinates the possible power transfers among the microgrids and... 

In future smart grids, energy storage systems (EESs) and demand response (DR) are expected to have an important role in balancing load changes arising from life-style of consumers and varying output of some renewable energy resources. However, activating DR and installing ESSs need huge investment forcing system owner to justify their effectiveness prior to any implementation. This paper presents a model to find the optimal capacity of EESs in distribution systems with demand responding to electricity price changes. The model aims at maximizing system owner profit by lessening total electricity provision costs. The model is formulated as a mixed integer non-linear programming problem. Due to... 

This paper investigates the role of parking lots in improving the reliability of renewable-based distribution systems, through provision of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) programs during outage events. In this regard, municipal parking decks are viewed as distributed energy storage systems and the amount of available energy from these units in random contingency events is probabilistically modeled for reliability studies. Appropriate stochastic models are also introduced to capture the volatility and intermittency of renewable sources. Moreover, it is discussed that how the adopted outage management scheme (OMS) in contingency events can affect the reliability level of customers. In response, several... 

In this paper, we propose and investigate several crosstalk reduction techniques for hybrid quantum-classical dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing systems. The transmission of intense classical signals alongside weak quantum ones on the same fiber introduces some crosstalk noise, mainly due to Raman scattering and non-ideal channel isolation, that may severely affect the performance of quantum key distribution systems. We examine the conventional methods of suppressing this crosstalk noise, and enhance them by proposing an appropriate channel allocation method that reduces the background crosstalk effectively. Another approach proposed in this paper is the usage of orthogonal frequency... 

This paper investigates the operation of a smart distribution system comprised of multiple microgrids during emergency conditions. It proposes a two-stage hierarchical scheme for outage management in such a system to enhance the security of supply during contingencies. This goal is achieved through sharing the available generation and storage capacities among different microgrids. In doing so, a well-organized framework is devised in order to introduce the roles and tasks of each player in operation stage of a multi-microgrids system. Based on this framework, the general optimization model that needs to be evaluated at each stage of the proposed outage management scheme is formulated. In... 

Nowadays, the essentiality of asset management in power systems and higher utilization of resources have become more critical to keep pace with the radically growing demand of today's networks. Power transformers are amongst the most important equipments installed in power distribution systems. Therefore, this paper presents a novel methodology to improve the utilization of substation transformers. In this methodology, the transformer utilization of a two-transformer substation is increased via reconfiguration considering the single contingency policy (SCP). The online reconfiguration helps to maximize the amount of load transferred from a substation with a failed transformer to its... 

Estimation of physical parameters in dynamical systems driven by linear partial differential equations is an important problem. In this paper, we introduce the least costly experiment design framework for these systems. It enables parameter estimation with an accuracy that is specified by the experimenter prior to the identification experiment, while at the same time minimising the cost of the experiment. We show how to adapt the classical framework for these systems and take into account scaling and stability issues. We also introduce a progressive subdivision algorithm that further generalises the experiment design framework in the sense that it returns the lowest cost by finding the... 

Many Random Key Distribution (RKD) schemes have been proposed in the literature to enable security applications in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). A main security aspect of RKD schemes is their resistance against node capture attacks, since compromising the sensors and capturing their keys is a common risk in such networks. We propose a new method, based on a 2-Dimensional Hash Chain (2DHC), that can be applied on any RKD scheme to improve their resilience. Our method maintains the flexibility and low cost features of RKD schemes and it doesn't require any special-purpose hardware or extra memory to store keys in the sensors. We demonstrate that our approach significantly increases the... 

Multi-agent systems can be seen as an apparatus for testing the performance of real distributed systems. One problem encountered in multi-agent systems with the learning capability is credit assignment. This paper presents two methods for solving this problem. The first method assigns credit to the agents according to the history of the interaction while the second method assigns credit to the agents according to the knowledge of agents, and thus the shares of the agents are extracted from the feedback of the environment. The computer experiments show that critic learning has a positive impact in credit assignment problem  

Network coding was first introduced in information theory for increasing the multicast rate in the networks with directed links. We can model many of the content distribution networks and overlay networks with such a network. Therefore, the solutions introduced in information theory can be used in these networks. In this paper, we analyze using of network coding in uncoordinated cooperative content distribution systems. Reaching the optimum performance in an uncoordinated system needs blocks of the system to be "equally important". In that case, we can retrieve the whole data without need of central controller or complex algorithms. In part of this paper, we exactly define the concept of...