Sharif Digital Repository

With high growth rate of demand for energy in different societies, the need for energy resources has been increased significantly. This has resulted in introduction of new energy resources, i. e. renewable energy resources in generation sector of energy systems. However, the intrinsic features of these energy resources call for higher flexibility in different sectors of energy systems. Flexibility in a comprehensive sense tries to cover the amount of imbalance between production and demand in energy systems. This paper has attempted to introduce the concept of operational flexibility in microgrids and it also has presented a step-by-step algorithm to assess this operational index based on a... 

Uncoordinated adoption of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) imposes further load on the distribution network, and therefore may result in disruptive impacts on the grid. Transactive coordination of PEVs has been introduced as an effective approach to mitigate these negative consequences. This paper furthers efforts enabling PEVs to participate in a real-time retail electricity market under a transactive energy (TE) paradigm. In this regard, PEV owners will estimate their willingness to pay/accept using a user-friendly strategy and submit the estimated values to the retail market operator. Then using a network-constrained market clearing mechanism, the clearing prices, i.e., dual variables of... 

As the electricity market undergoes continuous evolutions, along with the outdated nature of the grid, system operators would have to be able to more effectively manage the operation costs since waves of maintenance costs and equipment investments would be anticipated in the years to come. Strategic implementation of cost-effective reliability centered maintenance (RCM) approaches seems to be a key solution. This paper proposes an efficient method to assess the component criticality for the system overall reliability and further maintenance focuses. A solution concept of game theory, called Shapely Value, that is able to fairly identify the contribution of each single equipment to the system... 

Secure operation of protective intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) has been recognized as a crucial issue for power grids. By gaining access to substation IEDs, intruders can severely disrupt the operation of protection systems. This paper develops an analytical reliability assessment framework for quantifying the impacts of the hypothesized integrity attacks against protection systems. Petri net models are used to simulate possible intrusion scenarios into substation networks. The cyber network model is constructed from firewall, intrusion prevention system (IPS), and password models, which are three types of defense mechanisms for protecting substation networks. In this paper, two main... 

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... 

Spinning reserve (SR) is one of the most important ancillary services which are needed for satisfying reliability requirements, including the desired level of security in power systems. By definition, spinning reserve is the unloaded section of synchronized generation that is able to respond immediately to serve load. This paper proposes a hybrid DCOPF and harmony search (HS) optimization method as a novel heuristic approach to the joint dispatch of energy and reserve considering the bottling of reserve due to transmission limits. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined by applying it to the IEEE 30-bus test system. The results obtained using the proposed method are presented... 

One of the most important issues in modal estimation of power systems using PMUs data is the negative effect of outliers. Hence, in addition to the techniques of analyzing PMUs data, the necessity of implementing some kinds of approach to overcome these outliers is tangible. This paper aims to present different approaches to overcome outliers and also estimate the electromechanical modes of the system accurately when there is suspicion that the PMUs data may be contaminated by discordant measurements. Proposed approaches are generally categorized into two main classifications: the first category detects and modifies outliers in the pre-processing stage adaptively and then prepares the... 

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...