Penalty costs by electric service quality as real time decision making criteria on load restoration in MV networks

In de-regulated Latin American Electric Markets, utilities are strongly penalized for deficiencies in the Electric Service Quality (ESQ). This paper presents a fuzzy-heuristic methodology to find the optimal economical load restoration alternative in case of faults, based on a multi-criteria analysis that considers ESQ signals as decision criteria. The ESQ allows to evaluate on real time frequency and duration indexes of interruptions to determine penalty costs for nonsupplied energy. Restoration times associated to different alternatives are calculated by a fuzzy inference system to determine future penalty costs for each of them. The decision making is achieved in a fuzzy environment taking into account the time at which the interruption happens and its duration. For multiple simultaneous faults, a priority order must be set based on preliminary estimated penalties. The proposed methodology was proved on a real network in which the advantages of the method were verified