An Advanced Software Tool to Simulate Service Restoration Problems: a case study on Power Distribution Systems

This paper presents a software tool to simulate a practical problem in smart grid systems. A feature of the smart grid is a system self-recovery capability in the occurrence of anomalies, such as a recovery of a power distribution network after an occurrence of a fault. When this system has a capacity for self-recovery, it is called self-healing. The intersection among areas as computer science, telecommunication, automation and electrical engineering, has allowed power systems to gain new technologies. However, because it is a multi-area domain, self-recovery simulation tools in smart grids are often highly complex as well as presenting low fidelity by using approximation algorithms. The main contribution of this paper is a simulator with high fidelity and low complexity in terms of programming, usability and semantics. In this simulator, a computational intelligence technique and a derivative method for calculating the power flow were encapsulated. The result is a software tool with high abstraction and easy customization, aimed at a self-healing system for a reconfiguration of an electric power distribution network.