Power distribution system switching operation scheduling for load balancing by using colored Petri nets

This study attempts to determine the daily load patterns of service zones, line switches, distribution feeders, and main transformers by using customer information in a customer information system (CIS) and information about distribution transformers in the outage management information system (OMIS) in Taiwan Power Company (Taipower). When a power distribution system is operating under normal conditions, the reconfiguration of feeders for balancing loads among distribution feeders is obtained by the colored Petri nets (CPN) inference mechanism, which improves the operating performance of distribution systems. A practical Taiwan power distribution system, with daily load patterns derived by a load survey, is used for a computer simulation and, thus, determines the effectiveness of the proposed methodology to improve the balancing of the feeder load for distribution systems by considering the load characteristics of the service customers.