Improved demand controllability by grid reconfiguration for congestion management

This paper aims to bring new insight into the topic of congestion management, make its solution more efficient and reliable and change it into a more grid-like management approach in the context of smart grids. A novel approach is proposed to manage higher-level grid congestions by demand side management (DSM) together with lower-level grid reconfiguration for load transfer (LT). We show that the controllability prompted by normally-closed and normally-open switches for LT outperforms DSM controllability over static lower-level meshed configurations. This way we show that there is potentially a major benefit from coordinating actions of distribution and transmission system operators in solving congestion management problems. The IEEE 14 bus network is used to illustrate the proposed optimal control approaches and to quantify its potential benefits.