A novel approach for reconfiguring distribution system and its sensitivity analysis

This paper presents a novel approach to reconfigure distribution system based on optimal power flow and heuristics. Network reconfiguration problem is formulated as the optimal power flow (OPF) problem with switch states as the only decision variables, which is solved by relaxing discrete switch states into continuous values. Based on the OPF solution, the results of continuous switch states are revised into integer values using heuristic methods and thus the optimal system structure is determined. Moreover, the sensitivity of the power losses for changing switch states is analyzed. The proposed approach is applied to two test systems and its effectiveness is verified.