An effective encoding scheme of obtaining radial topology structures in distribution networks

The structure of a distribution network has great effects on economy, power supply reliability and investment of a power system. To obtain an optimal topology from possible topologies, we need to solve an optimisation problem which aims to find a radial structure satisfying operating constraints. As a basis of solving this optimisation problem, the encoding scheme, is to represent the candidate configurations by a series of codes. Numerical candidate topologies and unfeasible codes would lead low efficiency or premature convergence. This paper presents an effective scheme which can rapidly produce all radial configurations of a distribution network. In order to reduce the computational requirement of solution space, initial network is simplified as a topological graph which reserves loop branches and T-nodes. And a loop-branch chain incidence matrix is derived from analyzing the relationship between any two loops. Then the principles of selecting switches of each variable are designed to determine the ranges of the variables. All radial candidate solutions are available rapidly through applying the theory of combination. The scheme presented minimizes the number of solutions and avoids tedious radial checking procedure in view of avoiding any infeasible solutions. The validity of the proposed scheme is verified by illustrative examples.