Innovative methodology for observability improvement of distribution networks

The rapid spread of the Dispersed Generation (DG) in Distribution Networks (DNs) pushes the Distribution Company to actively manage and control the DN. In order to make this possible, a thorough knowledge of the system state is mandatory and the well-known state estimation techniques used by Transmission System Operators (TSOs) could be applied, but the DNs lack of redundancy due to very limited number of measurement equipment and the impossibility to characterize them statistically make this impossible. The paper proposes an innovative methodology whose aim is to maximize the observability of DNs, by taking into account the current limitations. The proposed algorithm considers the presence of a limited number of measurements located in the primary substations (situation encountered in many DNs) and is designed to be computationally fast. Finally, the performance of the methodology is evaluated on test networks modeling real DNs.