Andre Tache's research while affiliated with BC Hydro and other places

Traditionally, reliability evaluations for substation configurations and distribution networks are performed separately and substation reliability evaluation only focuses on a single substation. This paper presents a technique to assess the reliability of multiple substations with associated distribution networks. Based on Markov modeling, a clustering approach, a linear programming algorithm and the state enumeration method, the proposed technique has many attractive features, including the capability to handle both radial and looped networks, dependent and cascading failures, different switching actions, various failure modes, equipment capacity limits, and avoidance of network connectivity checking for outage events. A case study using an actual utility example is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented technique.

Substation reliability evaluation is one of the important tasks in power system reliability since substation originated (terminal-related) failures can have significant impact on both bulk transmission system and distribution system. A quantitative reliability assessment of a detailed substation topology is valuable to system planning and operation functions. This paper presents a combined state enumeration and linear programming method for substation reliability evaluation. A case study based on an actual system at BC Hydro is illustrated. The study results could prove useful for station planning and design to optimize an investment cost associated with an improvement of supply reliability.