PLANNING OF DISTRIBUTION FEEDER RECONFIGURATION WITH PROTECTIVE DEVICE COORDINATION

This paper presents an algorithm for the planning of distribution feeder reconfiguration with protective device coordination being taken into account. Distribution feeders are normally reconfigured with changing load patterns to achieve load balancing and loss reduction. In order to ensure that the protective devices are properly coordinated in the process of feeder reconfiguration, the locations of the fuses for the distribution system under study are determined by using the proposed algorithm. A set of switchable regions within which switch operations are allowed for feeder reconfiguration are identified. Once the distribution system has been planned using the developed algorithm, the feeders can be reconfigured in real-time distribution system operation with all protective devices properly coordinated by changing the open/closed states of the switches in the switchable regions. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by conducting feeder reconfiguration planning on a distribution network in Taiwan power system.