Improve capacity utilization of substation transformers via distribution network reconfiguraion and load transfer

Nowadays, the essentiality of asset management in power systems and higher utilization of resources have become more critical to keep pace with the radically growing demand of today's networks. Power transformers are amongst the most important equipments installed in power distribution systems. Therefore, this paper presents a novel methodology to improve the utilization of substation transformers. In this methodology, the transformer utilization of a two-transformer substation is increased via reconfiguration considering the single contingency policy (SCP). The online reconfiguration helps to maximize the amount of load transferred from a substation with a failed transformer to its neighboring substation. This load transfer maximization provides higher transformer capacity utilization possible. In the presented methodology, the load transfer is optimized through two hierarchical stages. In the first stage, the best configuration of the assisting substation is achieved. Then, in the second stage, load points that can be transferred from the substation with a failed transformer to its neighboring healthy substation are determined. In both of the stages, the reconfiguration problem is modeled as a mixed integer second-order cone programming problem. The IEEE 33 bus distribution network is considered as the test system and the results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in transformer utilization improvement.