Decision Support Methods for Restoration in Earthquake-Damaged Medium Voltage Electrical Distribution Networks

With developing technology, the continuity of electric energy has gained the utmost importance. Critical customers(hospitals, critical government departments, military units, large industrial establishments, etc.) who need electrical energy to maintain their operations in the event of a possible disaster need to be energized as soon as possible. This project aims to evaluate disaster scenarios such as earthquakes and to develop a decision support method for the rapid elimination of the hazard related problems that may occur in the electricity distribution system.

The Main Flow of The Decision Support Method

A decision support method based on the Markov Decision Process that uses the failure probabilities obtained after the performed structural analysis is developed within the scope of the project. This developed method works in real-time to provide optimum decision support to the system operator. It recommends a strategy for restoration, which is constantly updated with the information received from the field. The improved decision support method restores the network smoothly by taking the electrical characteristics of the network into account.

Sample System and State Transitions

Each state of MDP is a snapshot of the system and includes the status of each bus. The actions are defined by the buses that are attempted to energize. After construction, the optimum actions are decided and the policy is synthesized considering the objectives. During the restoration process, the system is energized according to the information from the field. In the image below, the real-time operation steps to take actions are defined.

Real-Time Operations

People

Principal Investigator: Assoc. Prof. Murat Gol (METU EEE)

Researchers:

Asst. Prof Ebru Aydin Gol (METU CENG)

Asst. Prof Burcu Güldür Erkal (Hacettepe University CE)

Students:

Onur Yigit Arpali (METU CENG)

İlker Işık (METU CENG)

Uğur Can Yılmaz (METU EEE)

Merve Bayraktar (Hacettepe University CE)

Publications

Ilker Isik, Onur Yigit Arpali, Ebru Aydin Gol. Optimal Policy Synthesis from A Sequence of Goal Sets with An Application to Electric Distribution System Restoration. ADHS’21.

Onur Yigit Arpali, Ugur Can Yilmaz, Ebru Aydin Gol, Burcu Guldur Erkal, Murat Gol. MDP based Decision Support for Earthquake Damaged Distribution System Restoration,  IEEE PES General Meeting. Montreal, Canada. 2020

Ebru Aydin Gol, Burcu Guldur Erkal, Murat Gol. A Novel MDP Based Decision Support Framework to Restore Earthquake Damaged Distribution Systems. IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT-Europe) 2019.