Analytical Verification of Performance of Deep Neural Network Based Time-Synchronized Distribution System State Estimation

Recently, we demonstrated the success of a time-synchronized state estimator using deep neural networks (DNNs) for real-time unobservable distribution systems. In this paper, we provide analytical bounds on the performance of the state estimator as a function of perturbations in the input measurements. It has already been shown that evaluating performance based only on the test dataset might not effectively indicate the ability of a trained DNN to handle input perturbations. As such, we analytically verify the robustness and trustworthiness of DNNs to input perturbations by treating them as mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems. The ability of batch normalization in addressing the scalability limitations of the MILP formulation is also highlighted. The framework is validated by performing time-synchronized distribution system state estimation for a modified IEEE 34-node system and a real-world large distribution system, both of which are incompletely observed by micro-phasor measurement units.