Mitigating failure propagation in microgrids through topology reconfiguration

Abstract

Abstract Microgrids (MGs) could be subject to cascaded line failures due to their restricted power supply and power flow paths. This paper introduces a novel scheme for cascaded failure containment (CFC). CFC employs power flow and topology reconfiguration optimization in order to prevent the spreading of failure and enable the microgrid to sustain its operation. CFC first optimizes the power flow while considering frequency variation (OPF-freq). The optimization strives to prevent the propagation of the failure while maximizing the supported loads by the system. Then, CFC opts to increase the failure resiliency of the MG based on the OPF-freq solution through topology reconfiguration. The topology optimization is formulated as an integer linear program for minimizing the maximum line stability index. The formulation also takes into consideration the system’s operational constraints. Validation is carried out through the simulation of the IEEE 33 system as an islanded microgrid. Detailed illustrative examples and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of CFC and its superiority to competing approaches in the literature.