Algoritmo de evolução diferencial discreta aplicado a reconfiguração de redes de distribuição de energia elétrica

Abstract

Power Distribution Networks (PDN) compose the Power System infrastructure responsible for delivering power to the final consumers. Occasionally, these networks have to be modified due to various factors such as contingency, load curve evolution or due to system planning and expansion. When reconfiguring the PDN, the current topology is modified in order to optimize some cost functions. The reconfiguration must not violate physical limits, which are the maximum voltage variation at the buses and the maximum current over the conductors; also, it has to maintain the radial topology. Given the combinatorial explosion of the number of candidate solutions for this problem, evolutionary algorithms are a suitable method for solving this searching problem. This work proposes a Discrete Differential Evolution algorithm for the solution of reconfiguration problems involving tree networks, and considering the following cost functions: monetary costs, costs due to faults, and switching costs. The proposed methodology is applied to problem instances involving networks with 21 and 100 buses. Each instance is analyzed considering reconfiguration due to contingency, reconfiguration due to load curve evolution profile, and reconfiguration due to network expansion. The results obtained show the satisfactory performance of the proposed methodology for network reconfiguration.