Technical and Economic Assessment for Deployment of Distribution Automation Equipments - Enabling Self-Healing Strategies

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology to evaluate technical and economic benefits achieved by deploying remotely operated switching devices (ROSDs) envisaging Self-Healing strategies. The network is firstly divided in several zones, having pre existent ROSDs as boundaries and selected the zone with the higher energy not supplied (ENS). Thereafter a failure event on the selected zone is evaluated with a cost/benefit analysis in the entire equipment life cycle. Thereunto cost of energy not supplied, reduction on the electricity sales during the interruption, customer compensations and regulatory penalties/benefits associated with the quality of service are taken into account. The solution approach was applied to a real Portuguese distribution network for a case study. Reliability improvement as well as a payback period within equipment life cycle was achieved.