Long term distribution network planning considering urbanity uncertainties

This paper addresses the problem of long term distribution network planning under urbanity uncertainties. Unpredictable urbanity plans are expected facts in developing/under developed countries. This type of uncertainties make it difficult to implement designed network in the future and leads to increasing operational costs including loss and outage costs. In this paper we presented a novel approach for distribution network planning which in addition of eliminating harmful effects of urbanity uncertainties, leads to easy management and operation of resulted network. In this approach several points of study region with high accessibility are selected as candidate embranchment points and optimal connection configuration of load points to the embranchment points is determined by genetic algorithm considering investment, loss and also customer interruption costs. Afterward, final structure of network is designed by branch exchange method considering the embranchment points as representative to load points in their service area. The performance of the proposed approach is assessed on a test distribution network.

► This paper addresses the problem of long term distribution network planning under urbanity uncertainties.
► Feeder routing is robust for urbanity uncertainties, has simple operation and management and as well as high reliability.
► Genetic algorithm with new coding is used for optimization.