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New Challenges in Electrical Power Distribution Networks

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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "F: Electrical Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 6607

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Alzenira Da Rosa Abaide

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Guest Editor

Center of Excellence in Energy and Power Systems, Federal University of Santa Maria, Santa Maria 97105-900, Brazil
Interests: operation and planning of distribution systems; distributed generation; load forecasting; smart grids; renewable energy; microgrids; electric mobility

Prof. Dr. Nelson Knak Neto

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Center of Excellence in Energy and Power Systems, Federal University of Santa Maria, Cachoeira do Sul 97105-900, Brazil
Interests: distribution system; distributed generation; energy management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The social development of a region can be completely dependent on and represented by the local consumption of electricity and its growth rate over the years.

This comprises part of the current worldwide economic demand to increase the availability of energy. Considering the development of new technologies, different proposals for power generation and distribution to the population and industries have been made. Reliability must be retained while progress is being made.

In this context, for the high-quality and efficient delivery of energy to consumers, distribution systems in power grids are essential. For the delivery of energy, a high level of detailed medium- and long-term planning and significant monetary investment is needed, as sustainable technical solutions are crucial.

One of the main challenges that the Planning and Operation sectors face within distribution systems is the continuous capacity increase in power grids. Intermittent sources of renewable energy created a new scenario when considering load forecasting models together with electric mobility, which is now a reality and must be managed.

Moreover, the connection of all of these previously mentioned aspects will provide new relationships between consumers, prosumers, distribution system operators, and power system agents, bringing a different energy business model to the general population for consumption and influencing the financial health of energy distributors companies.

This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent advancements related to new challenges in electrical power distribution networks, integrating planning aspects to distributed generation utilization, storage applications, microgrid models, EV integration, solutions for system protection, and business models for system management.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to:

Load and generation forecasting at the distribution system level;
Network expansion planning;
Network operation planning;
Investment strategies;
Integration of distributed energy resources;
Smart grids;
Microgrids;
Electric mobility, considering the development of charging infrastructures, G2V, V2V, V2G;
Business models and the relation between distribution agents;
Uncertainties and risk management at the distribution level;
System reliability
Advances in the distribution regulation and tariff models;
Advances in protection schemes;
Automation, control, and management of distribution networks.

Prof. Dr. Alzenira Da Rosa Abaide
Prof. Dr. Nelson Knak Neto
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

distribution planning
smart grids
microgrids
electrical vehicles
distributed energy resources
distribution business models
protection
distribution automation
uncertainties and risk management

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 4162 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Optimization Approach for Planning Soft Open Points in a MV-Distribution System to Maximize the Hosting Capacity

by Ricardo de Oliveira, Leonardo Willer de Oliveira and Edimar José de Oliveira

Energies 2023, 16(3), 1035; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16031035 - 17 Jan 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1245

Abstract

Distributed energy resources (DERs) based on renewable power, such as photovoltaic (PV), have been increasing worldwide. To support this growth, some technologies have been developed to increase the hosting capacity (HC) of distribution networks (DNs), such as the Soft Open Point (SOP), which can replace normally open switches in DNs with the advantage of allowing power and voltage control. The benefits of SOPs in terms of increasing distributed generation (DG) hosting capacity can be enhanced by network reconfiguration (NR). In this work, an optimization-based approach is proposed for placing SOP in DN with simultaneous NR; that is, the proposed algorithm consists of a promising alternative to previous works in the literature that deal with SOP placement and NR in an iteratively way or in a two-step procedure, considering that better results can be obtained by simultaneously handling both options, as shown in the introduced case studies. The optimization problem is modeled as nonlinear mixed-integer programming, and solved by a Multi-objective Artificial Immune System (MOAIS). The proposed algorithm is applied to a well-known medium-voltage (MV) test system that is widely used for the problem at hand, and the results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach to maximize the HC by optimizing the SOP installation site in the tested system. An important outcome is that the association of SOP planning and NR in a simultaneous manner tends to provide better quality solutions, where HC can overcome 400% for multiple SOPs. Another outcome is that the proposed MOAIS is able to provide good concurrent solutions to support the decision-making of the DN planner. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Challenges in Electrical Power Distribution Networks)

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23 pages, 4347 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Identification of Nontechnical Losses in Distribution Systems Adding Exogenous Data and Artificial Intelligence

by Marcelo Bruno Capeletti, Bruno Knevitz Hammerschmitt, Renato Grethe Negri, Fernando Guilherme Kaehler Guarda, Lucio Rene Prade, Nelson Knak Neto and Alzenira da Rosa Abaide

Energies 2022, 15(23), 8794; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15238794 - 22 Nov 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1554

Abstract

Nontechnical losses (NTL) are irregularities in the consumption of electricity and mainly caused by theft and fraud. NTLs can be characterized as outliers in historical data series. The use of computational tools to identify outliers is the subject of research around the world, and in this context, artificial neural networks (ANN) are applicable. ANNs are machine learning models that learn through experience, and their performance is associated with the quality of the training data together with the optimization of the model’s architecture and hyperparameters. This article proposes a complete solution (end-to-end) using the ANN multilayer perceptron (MLP) model with supervised classification learning. For this, data mining concepts are applied to exogenous data, specifically the ambient temperature, and endogenous data from energy companies. The association of these data results in the improvement of the model’s input data that impact the identification of consumer units with NTLs. The test results show the importance of combining exogenous and endogenous data, which obtained a 0.0213 improvement in ROC-AUC and a 6.26% recall (1). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Challenges in Electrical Power Distribution Networks)

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19 pages, 8524 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Influence of Negative Sequence Injection Strategies on Faulted Phase Selector Performance

by María Teresa Villén, Maria Paz Comech, Eduardo Martinez Carrasco and Aníbal Antonio Prada Hurtado

Energies 2022, 15(16), 6018; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15166018 - 19 Aug 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2311

Abstract

Renewable power is expected to increase drastically in the coming years due to the energy transition. A large part of the newly installed generators will be connected to the power system through inverters and electronic converters, whose behaviour differs from the generators connected synchronously to the network. One of the main differences is the current contribution during symmetrical and asymmetrical faults which can affect protection systems. New grid codes establish requirements for fast current injection, but the converter’s maximum current limitations during faults make it difficult to establish control strategies for such current contribution. This paper studies the performance of faulted phase selector algorithm of a commercial relay under the current contribution from renewables before unbalanced faults. Two positive and negative sequence current injection strategies in compliance with new Spanish grid code requirements are proposed and tested under fault conditions in HiL (Hardware in the Loop). Test results show that the selected injection strategy affects the fault phase identification algorithm. Furthermore, the negative sequence injection requirements established in the new grid code improve the relay performance when line-to-line faults are applied, but they are not enough to identify all fault types. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Challenges in Electrical Power Distribution Networks)

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