Towards more resilient electrical networks in urban areas

Catalonia Institute for Energy Research, Jardins de les Dones de Negre 1, 2a., 08930 Sant Adrià de Besòs, Barcelona, Spain

^* Corresponding authors: apalau@irec.cat
mdeprada@irec.cat
jldominguez@irec.cat

Abstract

The requirement of system decarbonisation fixed by the EU 2050 plan is leading to an increased establishment of renewable energy sources. Additionally, the emergence of power electronics and ICT technologies has played a decisive role towards a novel distribution electric grid allowing new monitoring, operation and control. In parallel to the energetic transition, an increasing occurrence of extreme weather events and a reinforced concern on climate change leads to the concept of resilience, which is the capacity to adapt and recover from disruptive events in a coordinated procedure. After a fault event, assuming the objective of the system operator is to minimize the load unsupplied, the present study aims at outlining an early research state on the concept of self-healing through the development of a power flow optimization algorithm within a meshed network. Moreover, the effects of integrating Distributed Energy Resources (DER) in order to increase distribution grid resilience as well as to ensure and secure power supply to the system leads to the clusterization of the power system. With controllable technologies, the on-outaged areas are able to disconnect from the main grid, creating islanded microgrids (MGs) which can work autonomously and consequently, increase grid resilience.