Coordination of network reconfiguration and mobile energy storage system fleets to facilitate active distribution network restoration under forecast uncertainty

Abstract

The active distribution network (ADN) shows great potential for use in network restoration services, given its ability to actively control the network topology, distributed generation (DG) outputs, and demand response (DR) resources. However, its utility may be limited due to the geographical dispersion of DG and DR resources when applied to natural disasters such as windstorms, earthquakes, and floods. In addition, the increasing use of renewable energy creates fluctuations and uncertainties, hindering ADNs from realizing reliable energy scheduling during disasters. Mobile energy storage system (MESS) fleets can be used to economically provide flexible emergency power supply for network restoration services. MESSs can also hedge against load and DG output forecast risks. This article proposes a novel coordinated network reconfiguration and MESS fleets dispatching model considering the uncertainty in DG output and load forecasts to increase the resilience of the ADN after disasters. The MESS traveling strategy is modeled by an extended transit delay model. Then, a novel deterministic network restoration model incorporating the MESS, stationary energy storage system, DG, DR, and network reconfiguration is proposed and programmed using mixed-integer linear programming. Then, an ellipsoidal uncertainty set is employed to describe the uncertainty of load and DG output forecasts, and a robust network restoration model is proposed based on the deterministic one. The proposed deterministic and robust network restoration models are verified on a 59-bus rural distribution system in China.