Microgrids Formation for Resiliency Improvement of Distribution Systems Considering Reconfiguration

Abstract

Distribution systems are exposed to many events, such as natural disasters which may lead to a major failure in feeding many loads as a result of the destruction of its poles, lines or other parts. The power supply may be affected and cannot operate. This paper proposes an approach to supply the critical loads from distributed energy resources (DERs) using mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) load restoration method combined with the reconfiguration dragonfly algorithm (DA) to restore the maximum number of critical loads. The first stage of the proposed approach is using the DERs to form microgrids when the main power is not in service. The reconfiguration of the distribution system is then applied in the second stage using the DA to supply the unrestored critical loads, considering minimum losses. The proposed method is tested on the IEEE 123-node feeder with 5 DERs. Simulation results show that the unrestored critical loads in the first stage can be re-energized by using the proposed method, hence the resiliency is enhanced.