A Novel Power Distribution Network Assessment Approach Using Drones Considering Wireless Charging

Abstract

Power networks are an important infrastructure that requires close monitoring and recurring assessment during and following a catastrophic event. The drone’s unique aerial and unmanned nature has made it an efficient and powerful tool for damage assessment of the power networks. In this article, we propose a drone-routing framework to enable the systematic and automatic assessment of power networks considering wireless charging of the drone during the scanning. This article incorporates the resilience-oriented line priority index to periodically prioritize the power lines based on their specifications and conditions, and by doing so, this improves the efficiency of the assessment. A multiobjective mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to dynamically determine the drone’s optimal routing and speed in order to assure that the drone gathers sufficient data while completing the assessment mission in the shortest period of time. Since the proposed optimization algorithm needs to be solved multiple times for different sections of the power network, we propose a set of solution algorithms to reduce the computational burden and allow the proposed algorithm to reach the optimal solution quickly. Simulation results on a power network consisting of 77 nodes and 73 lines illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in performing network-wide dynamic assessment using a drone.