Distributed Service Restoration of Active Electrical Distribution Systems using ADMM

An essential aspect that contributes to the resilience of radial electrical distribution systems (EDS) is the deployment of efficient and fast service restoration methods. In the presence of a permanent fault, the service restoration minimizes the amount of de-energized consumers by reducing the area that needs to be disconnected to isolate the faulty section of the network.

To do so, the service restoration algorithm can make use of automated switching devices and dispatchable energy resources allocated throughout the network to transfer loads among feeders, considering the system’s operational constraints. Depending on the size of the system and the complexity of the telecommunication infrastructure, the application of centralized restoration systems may neither be practical nor flexible.

Thus, in this paper, a distributed service restoration method is proposed, using the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm to solve the optimization problem. As such, the original service restoration model is distributed among the nodes and branches of the system that exchange limited information with neighboring nodes and branches.

Radiality constraint is also distributed by the proposed ADMM algorithm. A 44-node test system was used to conduct case studies. Results demonstrate that the proposed method efficiently solves the service restoration in active EDS without using a centralized intelligence.