Reliability Assessment of Microgrids with Local and Mobile Generation, Time-Dependent Profiles, and Intraday Reconfiguration

In this paper, the notion of reliability assessment for distribution system applications is revisited to include a number of practices emerging in the smart grid context. The information on the variations in time of generation and demand is taken into account to establish a reference network configuration that considers the definition of an intraday reconfiguration strategy based on conventional load profiles for different categories of demand (residential, industrial, and commercial). After a fault, the service restoration process is aided by the formation of autonomous islanded subsystems (microgrids). During the restoration period, each subsystem is able to serve the local demand in a given portion of the network and to reconnect to the main network through proper synchronization. Dedicated solutions for mobile generation and storage are exploited to reach the nodes needing additional supply. A sequential Monte Carlo method is used to carry out reliability assessment. The use of this method incorporates the effects of interfering near-coincident faults and time-varying load and local generation patterns. The application on a real distribution network is presented, showing the probability distributions of the reliability indicators (power and energy not supplied), as well as the breakdown of these indicators for different demand categories.