IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO.
3, AUGUST 2007
Skeleton-Network Reconfiguration Based on
Topological Characteristics of Scale-Free Networks
and Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization
Yan Liu, Student Member, IEEE, and Xueping Gu
Abstract—Black start, the restoration of a power system after a
complete blackout, is a key issue to the safety of power systems. The
reasonable network reconfiguration is necessary for establishing
the main network and restoring loads quickly. Based on topological
characteristics of scale-free networks and discrete particle swarm
optimization, a skeleton-network reconfiguration strategy is pro-
posed in this paper. Through calculating node importance degrees,
priorities of sources and loads could be scaled quantitatively. Then,
network reconfiguration efficiency, an index represented by net-
work structure and subjected to restoration constrains, is used to
evaluate the reconfiguration effect. Furthermore, discrete particle
swarm optimization is employed in reconstructing skeleton net-
works that relieve reconfiguration burden considerably. Applica-
tion examples verify that several optimal reconfiguration schemes
achieved from the strategy can provide dispatchers an effective de-
cision support under the uncertain system situation.
Index Terms—Black start, network reconfiguration, power
systems, particle swarm optimization, scale-free networks, system
restoration.
I. INTRODUCTION
ODERN society is dependent on the power supply
M excessively. The demand for sufficient and reliable
power supply is becoming more and more intensive. Through
optimizing distribution of generation sources, large-scale power
systems have improved the efficiency and reliability of power
supply. However, the possibility of widespread blackout due to
various faults is still existing or even increasing. Since 1960s,
several extensive blackouts occurring worldwide, including
the well-known 8.14 blackout of 2003 in the parts of U.S. and
Canada, have raised alarms to power system operation safety [1].
While the fault possibility could be decreased through improving
the network structure and management measures, widespread
blackouts are practically inevitable because of the increasing
complexity and uncertainty in the deregulated power systems.
After a blackout occurs in a power system, effective measures
must be taken to restore the system to normal operation as soon
as possible. As one of self-rescuing measures of a blackout
power system, the black start restoration is of great importance.
Manuscript received April 11, 2006; revised December 13, 2006. This work
was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(50577017). Paper no. TPWRS-00222-2006.
The authors are with the Key Laboratory of Power System Protection and
Dynamic Security Monitoring and Control under Ministry of Education, North
China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003, Hebei Province, China
(e-mail: bd_ly@263.net; mexpgu@yahoo.com.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2007.901486
0885-8950/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
1267
Black start is defined as the process that a system suffered
from a complete blackout is restarted through reconstructing its
networks and restoring its service depending on its self-starting
units, without help from other systems [2]. Being an extreme
condition of the system restoration, black start is a complex
decision-making and control problem for power system oper-
ators. It is customary in many electrical utilities to develop dis-
tinct start schemes to meet their particular needs [2]–[5]. Most
of schemes contain general guidelines used to define the re-
quired restoration plans [6]–[8]. Meanwhile, it is incumbent
upon utility operating management to assure that schemes are
kept up to date as the system changes. In order to make schemes
automatically, various approaches have been investigated. Typi-
cally, knowledge-based expert systems, which rely on the opera-
tors’ heuristic problem solving experience and technique, have
been employed extensively in the process of making schemes
[9]–[12]. As a function extension of expert systems, the appli-
cation of decision support technique to restoration is being paid
more attention in recent years [13]–[15]. Besides, mathematical
programming and intelligent algorithms have shown much po-
tential in the decision support of start schemes because they are
advantageous to solving the multi-objective combinatorial op-
timization problems [16], [17]. The main target of black-start
restoration is to effect a transition from a complete blackout
to a maximum feasible load condition in the minimum pos-
sible amount of time. Among methods proposed so far for de-
veloping start schemes, the operation cost such as operation or
switching time is preferred to be chosen as the optimization ob-
jective while maintaining a certain level of security. However, it
seems that little work has been done to investigate the restora-
tion process from the point of view of network topological struc-
ture. In general, black-start restoration includes two sequential
steps: the first step is to determine a relative optimal configu-
ration as a restoration target and the second to organize a se-
quence of switching operations to bring the faulted system into
the target system state defined in advance while all the restora-
tion constrains are satisfied. This paper is concerned with the
first step because a reasonable restoration target could locate im-
portance loads and relieve the restoration burden so that it paves
the way for making up operation scenario subsequently.
Based on topological characteristics of scale-free networks,
a skeleton-network reconfiguration strategy to determine the
restoration target is proposed in this paper. First, the importance
of sources and loads could be ranked quantitatively through
calculating node importance degrees. Then, network reconfig-
uration efficiency, which is represented mainly by the network
1268
structure and restricted by restoration security, is defined as the
optimization objective and used to identify skeleton networks.
Furthermore, the discrete particle swarm optimization is em-
ployed to implement the reconfiguration. Instead of providing a
restoration path sequence in detail, the strategy aims at obtaining
several reconfiguration schemes with better performance as the
guidance of dispatching operation. Application examples verify
that results from the strategy accord with system practice and
could be more effective under uncertain system situations.
II. SCALE-FREE NETWORK AND NODE IMPORTANCE DEGREE
A. Introduction of Scale-Free Networks
Networks could be used to represent many complex systems.
Understanding of network structure and its topological charac-
teristic is helpful to research on complex systems. In a tradi-
tional random network, node degree follows Poisson distribu-
tion and there exists a characteristic average degree. In other
words, most nodes have the same number of branches connected
with them and nodes with fewer or more branches than average
degree are fewer. When investigating the World Wide Web in
1998, Barabasi accidentally discovered that the distribution of
node degree follows exponential law. It means that most nodes
have smaller node degrees but fewer nodes have larger node
degrees, and besides, characteristic average degree of random
network disappeared. As a result, the network is named scale-
free network. Scale-free network takes on small-world effects
that imply fewer but connected intensively hub-nodes exist in
scale-free network [18]. Because of the large number of non-
hub-nodes, scale-free network is extraordinarily stable under ac-
cident such as getting rid of nodes randomly. However, it is ex-
ceptionally vulnerable when hub-nodes are attacked on purpose
[19].
As a practical complex system, power system has been facing
the operation safety problem. When investigating large-scale
blackout, some researchers have tried to explore the mechanism
of faults’ occurrence and propagation from system’s topological
structure as well as from environment, equipment and switching
operation [20]. Existing results indicate that small-world effects
are notable in a power system, though its node degree distribu-
tion doesn’t follow exponential law strictly [21]. Consequently,
it is necessary to evaluate the importance of nodes and identify
hub-nodes reasonably. On the one hand, the operation reliability
could be improved through protecting hub-nodes particularly in
the steady state. On the other hand, these hub-nodes could be
viewed as the guidance of system reconfiguration and restora-
tion after wide-area blackout.
B. Node Importance Degree
Traditionally, the concept of node degree is employed to scale
the importance of nodes when the network topological structure
is studied. That is to say, the node with more branches connected
is comparatively more important in whole network. However,
the fact is that some key nodes are not with larger node de-
grees. In order to solve the inconsistency, the method of node
contraction is introduced to assess the importance of nodes that
is named node importance degree . As shown in Fig. 1, when
the of node 12 is considered, the original network in Fig. 1(a)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO. 3, AUGUST 2007
Fig. 1. Demonstration of node contraction.
should be treated with node contraction corresponding to node
12 firstly. It means that nodes directly connected with node 12
will merge into one node. As a result, nodes 9, 10, 11, and 12
in Fig. 1(a) are replaced by the node 9 in Fig. 1(b) after node
contraction. Then, the definition of is given by (1)
(1)
where
total number of nodes in new network after node
contraction;
average of the shortest distances in new network
after node contraction;
after node contraction, the shortest distance
between node and node denoted with the
number of branches;
set consisting of all nodes in new network after
node contraction.
From (1), it is represented that original network is changed
remarkably or slightly due to node contraction. The width and
the depth of change are denoted respectively by the difference
of total node number and the average shortest distance between
original network and new network after node contraction.
Above all, it is more likely for the node with more branches
connected, namely the larger node degree, to hold larger
because its contraction will reduce the number of nodes consid-
erably. Secondly, the node at pass location may take larger .
This kind of node is necessary in the shortest path of many node
pairs so that the average shortest distance will be decreased
greatly after its contraction. In common situations, is less
than 1. However, (1) is inapplicable to the case that takes 1.
According to the meaning of , network change due to node
contraction is the most notable when all nodes merge into one
node. So, a special example is defined here, namely, takes
1 (the maximum value).
As an example, according to (1), of node 11 and node 12
in Fig. 1(a) are shown in Table I. To demonstrate the trait of
, the node degrees of these two nodes are also given. It is
evident that the node with a larger node degree (such as node
11) is not necessary more important. This characteristic will be
LIU AND GU: SKELETON-NETWORK RECONFIGURATION
TABLE I
COMPARISON OF NODE IMPORTANCE DEGREE AND NODE DEGREE
more notable with network enlarging so that is especially
meaningful for large-scale network.
III. SKELETON-NETWORK RECONFIGURATION
In general, black-start restoration consists of two consec-
utive phases: the determination of a target system and the
construction of a feasible operation sequence leading to the
target system. This paper focuses mainly on the first phase,
more clearly, the main purpose of reconfiguration here is to
identify certain number of subnets containing main important
nodes. Because the node number of these subnets is far fewer
than that of the original network and nodes with the higher
priority are given more attention, the reconfiguration meets
the requirement of hierarchical restoration. Consequently, it is
practical for planers to organize operation sequences and bring
them into effect in short time.
In order to determine the target system efficiently, a new con-
cept, namely skeleton network, is introduced here. Skeleton net-
work is the desirable target system composed by power sources,
important loads and transmission lines capable of coordinating
and distributing the power reasonably. According to the trait of
skeleton network, the importance of power sources and loads
should be evaluated first and viewed as the base of reconfigu-
ration. Secondly, an index named network reconfiguration ef-
ficiency is proposed to justify skeleton network. Such idea is
formed into the strategy of skeleton-network reconfiguration.
A. Importance Identification of Power Sources and Loads
In order to restore electric power supply promptly after the
complete blackout, the large-scale power system is usually di-
vided into several subsystems with self-start ability and restored
simultaneously. Reconfiguration will be in progress with respect
to these subsystems. Accordingly, importance of power sources
and loads locating in the same subsystem should be ranked in
the first place. The base for importance discrimination is node
importance degree that could provide a general assessment from
the point of view of whole network structure. Moreover, it is
necessary to regulate the rank of power sources or loads ac-
cording to guidelines of black-start restoration and dispatching
practice.
1) Importance Identification of Power Sources: It should be
noted first that the objective of justifying the importance
for power sources is not to exclude certain power sources
from reconfiguration, but provide valuable information
for chosen of loads and transmission lines subsequently.
After power sources’ node importance degrees have been
obtained, some imperative regulations must be made.
Firstly, source nodes with self-start ability should have
the highest priority because the situation for black start is
1269
complete blackout and crank power is crucial to subse-
quent restoration. Secondly, source nodes connecting with
crank power directly through relative short transmission
lines should have the higher priority. In this circumstance,
abnormal phenomena such as self-excitation of generators,
over-voltage while energizing transmission lines seldom
happen. So, restoring these sources is helpful to increasing
available power capacity and enlarging network promptly.
Moreover, units’ capacity and starting mode should be
taken into consideration because they determine the
amount of load picked up and the duration of restoration.
2) Importance Identification of Loads: All nodes except
source nodes in whole system could be viewed as load
nodes. The quality of reconfiguration may be quite dif-
ferent with different load nodes chosen. Our purpose is to
identify small number of important loads and take them
as components of skeleton network so that restoration
targets are explicit and the pressure of reconstructing net-
work in short time could be alleviated. When loads’ node
important degrees have been calculated, we could make
general important assessment for load nodes from network
topological structure. As same as power sources, it is
necessary to regulate loads’ importance rank according to
restoration requirements. Firstly, some loads requiring the
high power reliability (as hospitals, government buildings,
etc.) should have the highest priority despite their node
importance degrees. Secondly, certain loads, which are
viewed as kernel by dispatchers according to operation
custom, must take the higher priorities because once they
are picked up, the stability of the network being restored
could be improved or some strategic restoration paths
could be formed.
B. Definition of Network Reconfiguration Efficiency
In general, reconfiguration is a multistage, dynamic process.
Many electrical characteristics must be considered, for instance,
charging power and over-voltage analysis, electromechanical
transient analysis and power flow analysis. As mentioned in I,
the purpose of this paper is to find the restoration target instead
of switching sequences so that only parts of characteristics are
suitable for being considered here. Meanwhile, there exist many
uncertainties such as the availability of equipment, the proba-
bility of successful switching, and etc. So, several substituting
targets should be provided so as to organize and coordinate op-
erations fluently according to field situations. Consequently, an
evaluation index, namely network reconfiguration efficiency
shown in (2) is proposed to justify skeleton networks. is deter-
mined mainly by parameters concerned with network structure,
and . , as shown in (3), is average node importance degree
of load nodes chosen and it reflects the extent to that important
loads are involved in the reconfiguration. , as shown in (4), is
average clustering coefficient of all nodes chosen (source nodes
and load nodes) and it represents if branches (transmission lines)
distribute evenly in reconfiguration network. The larger is un-
desirable because many branches meet in very few nodes so
that it is difficult to enlarge network frame. The larger is, the
more efficient the reconfiguration is. It implies that loads with
1270
the highest or higher priorities are organized together with as
few transmission lines as possible and network achieved is sim-
plified furthest.
From (2), is also subjected to some inequality operation
constrains. Where, is the length of transmission line. When
energizing empty transmission line, over-voltage is notable
with line’s length increasing. In order to maintain prescribed
over-voltage limit, the longest distance permitted corresponding
to different voltage level, i.e., must be defined. Only
lines shorter than could be chosen in reconfiguration.
The other two unequal constrains in (2) are about operation
performance when power flow analysis is made with regard
to reconfiguration network. , as shown in (5), represents
the ratio of nodes unsatisfied with voltage limits to total nodes
in reconfiguration network. as shown in (6), represents
the ratio of branches exceeding transmission capacity limits to
total branches in reconfiguration network. Only when and
are smaller than their limits and that
vary from different restoration requirements, reconfiguration
network may be feasible in practice and thus be worthy of a
skeleton network
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
where
total number of nodes in reconfiguration network;
total number of loads in original network;
total number of loads in reconfiguration network;
node importance degree of load ; (8)
clustering coefficient of node in reconfiguration
network, . If there are nodes in
the vicinity of node , among them there exists
branches at most. If only branches
exist in fact, then ; (8), it is evident that current position
decision variable concerning load . 1 if certain load
is chosen in reconfiguration network and 0 otherwise;
total number of buses unsatisfied with voltage limits
concerning power flow of reconfiguration network;
total number of transmission lines in reconfiguration
network;
total number of branches unsatisfied with
transmission capacity constraints concerning power
flow of reconfiguration network.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO. 3, AUGUST 2007
IV. REALIZATION OF NETWORK RECONFIGURATION BASED ON
DISCRETE PARTICLE-SWARM OPTIMIZATION
A. Introduction of Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a population-based
optimization method first proposed by Kennedy and Eberhart
in 1995 [22]. PSO is basically developed through simulation
of bird flocking in two-dimensional space. It finds the optimal
solution using a population of particles. Each particle initial-
ized randomly, with current position and current velocity
, represents a candidate solution to the problem. Where,
represents the population of particle swarm,
represents the dimension of search space.
Each individual particle has a fitness value determined by
optimization function to justify its performance and retrieve its
direction and distance for updating. Equation (7) shows how
each particle pursues the optimal particle and updates itself at
time in order to find the optimal solution
(7)
where and denote the personal best position and the
global best position. The personal best position means where
particle presents the smallest error and the global best position
means where the lowest error among all the ’s yields. The
update of each particle is accomplished through tracing and
. Two pseudorandom sequences are used to
affect the stochastic nature of the algorithm. Acceleration coef-
ficient and control how far a particle will move in a single
iteration. Typically, they are both set to a value of 2.0. Note that
current position attained from (7) is current solution when
PSO operates in continuous space. However, current position
cannot be solved directly from current velocity when
PSO operates in discrete space and only 0 or 1 value is allowed
for and . As a result, we retrieve the particle update
(8) through employing the discrete binary version of PSO [23]
and evolving into the probability of particle update. For sim-
plicity, we call it DPSO
where denotes the probability of particle
evolution and is the threshold set for particle evolution. From
takes 1 from 0 or takes
0 from 1 if its current velocity is bigger than the threshold
. Otherwise, remains unchanged.
B. Algorithm Summary
From the formation of strategy for skeleton-network re-
configuration, it is a typical multi-constraint, multi-objective,
multi-step and nonlinear optimization problem and difficult to
be solved by traditional methods. Due to its advantages of par-
allel mechanism and robustness, PSO has been applied to many
LIU AND GU: SKELETON-NETWORK RECONFIGURATION
fields of power system research such as power flow computa-
tion, reactive power optimization, and etc [24], [25]. Therefore,
DPSO shown as (8) is used to implement reconfiguration.
1) Initialization.Initializationisthebaseforfollowingiteration
and optimization of DPSO. The key problem is to find the
suitable expression for particle to represent solution space.
It is evident that different combinations of power sources,
loads and transmission lines will form different reconfigura-
tion schemes. Once transmission lines areidentified, sources
and loads connected by these lines are confirmed definitely.
Therefore, we define the particle with the state sequence de-
noting which group of lines in original network is selected
to take part in reconfiguration. When certain line is selected,
corresponding position in state sequence takes 1 value. Oth-
erwise, 0 value is taken. Presented with a series of value 0 and
value1 whose bit number is (total number of transmis-
sion lines in original network), a state sequence represents
a reconfiguration scheme.
2) Fitness Function. In terms of network reconfiguration
efficiency , the aim of reconfiguration is to maximize
. When reconfiguration is realized with DPSO, the aim
should be represented in the form of fitness function. In
DPSO, fitness value of each particle is solved according
to fitness function so that the performance of each particle
could be evaluated. At the same time, and derived
in each iteration could direct particles to update through
tracing the current optimal particle. For DPSO, it is a
custom to rank the fitness value in ascending order, which
means the smaller the fitness value, the better the particle
is. Accordingly, fitness function is defined with the
reciprocal of as (9).
(9)
3) Verification of Effective Particle. For practical purpose,
reconfiguration schemes, i.e., state sequences are required
to be connected totally in topological structure. Otherwise,
following load restoration could not be accomplished
quickly. In DPSO, some particle’s operations such as
initialization and update are random in nature so that
topological connection of state sequence could not always
be satisfied. As a result, verification of effective particle
is necessary in order to achieve more feasible particle.
The details of verification are described as follow. After
a particle’s initialization or update, sources nodes and
load nodes should be under merge application through
checking topological relation of transmission lines. An
effective particle means that all source nodes and all load
nodes selected by state sequence belong to same topology
set. Otherwise, it is an ineffective particle and could be
also transformed into an effective one through changing
the value of one or several bits in state sequence. In a
sense, the transformation is analogous to interconnection
of several islands through additional lines in real systems.
C. Algorithm Flow
The steps of skeleton-network reconfiguration realized with
DPSO are as follows.
1271
1) Input parameters necessary for reconfiguration, including
bus data and line data.
2) Calculate node importance degree for all nodes. Then, im-
portance priorities of source nodes and load nodes could
be confirmed respectively according to principles of im-
portance identification.
3) Initialization of an -dimension, -size population of
particles. Random positions and velocities are formed si-
multaneously. The meaning of is the same as mentioned
in initialization of algorithm summary. Population size
is determined by solution space’s dimension. Larger is
beneficial to locate the global optimum, but will increase
calculation time and computer resource expenses. So, it is
an experiential value by means of testing.
4) Verification of effective particle. If all particles are effec-
tive, go to step 5) directly. Otherwise, ineffective particle
should be transformed into effective one, go to step 5).
5) With respect to particle : update the per-
sonal best position if the current fitness value is optimal.
6) Update the global best position from all current per-
sonal best position and find current optimal particle.
7) If maximum iteration step is satisfied or the global best po-
sition doesn’t change in a given iteration generations,
iteration terminates and go to step 10). Otherwise, go to
step 8). Note that maximum iteration step or given iteration
generations are the experiential value, which is determined
by testing and vary from different problems.
8) With respect to particle : a) Update particle
according (8); b) Verification of effective particle.
9) Go back to step 5).
10) Output optimal and suboptimal particles in ascending order
of fitness values. Transform them into corresponding re-
configuration schemes. According to (2), check the extent
to which they are satisfied the inequality constrains and
identify skeleton networks.
It should be noted that main testing items in step 10) include
overvoltage analysis and power flow corresponding to the in-
equality constrains in (2). As a practical method of overvoltage
analysis, the length of transmission line in reconfiguration
networks must be verified to maintain prescribed over-voltage
limit. As to power flow analysis, the output of unit takes 25%
rated power according to boiler’s technical minimum load,
which is the basic requirement for boiler’s stable operation.
Undoubtedly, electromechanical transient analysis is necessary
for adequate reconfiguration schemes. The accurate analysis
method is to formulate the state equations of the reconfiguration
systems and determine the stability by eigenvalue analysis or
time domain simulation. However, the stability of reconfigura-
tion systems is closely related to the units’ operation sequences
in restoration. As mentioned in Section I, the purpose of this
paper is to find the restoration target instead of switching
sequences so that electromechanical transient analysis will be
investigated in further research work.
V. APPLICATION EXAMPLES AND DISCUSSIONS
To test the validity of strategy proposed in this paper, the algo-
rithm has been programmed with MATLAB. The IEEE 30-bus
test system and a practical power system, the southern power
1272
Fig. 2. IEEE 30-bus power system diagram.
TABLE II
NODE IMPORTANCE DEGREE OF NODES IN IEEE 30-BUS SYSTEM
TABLE III
IMPORTANCE RANK OF SOURCE NODES IN IEEE 30-BUS SYSTEM
system of Hebei province in China, are taken as examples. Note
that power flow calculations of algorithm are carried out with a
power system simulation package, MATPOWER [26].
A. Example I
To show the process of skeleton-network reconfiguration in
detail, IEEE 30-bus system is tested firstly. Its diagram is shown
as Fig. 2, in which total 41 branches are included. Through
node contraction, node importance degree of all nodes could be
solved, as shown in Table II. To show the relative importance of
sources or loads, values in Table II should be normalized further
in terms of maximum of source nodes or load nodes respec-
tively. Results are shown in Tables III and IV. Note that source
1 is supposed as crank power in initial stage of black start, so
its importance rank is regulated to 1 from 0.85. In other word,
source 1 has the highest priority as same as source 27 though its
original is smaller.
DPSO is employed to reconfigure network skeleton. The pop-
ulation of particle swarm, i.e., and maximum iteration step
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO. 3, AUGUST 2007
TABLE IV
IMPORTANCE RANK OF LOAD NODES IN IEEE 30-BUS SYSTEM
Fig. 3. Skeleton network 1.
TABLE V
RECONFIGURATION SCHEMES FOR IEEE 30-BUS SYSTEM
take value of 10 and 30, respectively. Several relative optimal
schemes obtained from DPSO, namely skeleton networks are
shown in Table V and the first is illustrated with Fig. 3 further.
Because no transmission line is longer than and no ex-
ceeding transmission capacity happens, only is shown in
Table V.
According to the definition of , the smaller is, the better
the schemes is. As skeleton network 1 shown in Fig. 3, though
not all loads are involved, power sources and loads with higher
rank are connected through fewer transmission lines and un-
equal constrains are satisfied ( is set to 0.1). Because
the skeleton network is a subnet of original network, the burden
of reconstructing a network frame in short time could be relieved
considerably.
LIU AND GU: SKELETON-NETWORK RECONFIGURATION
Fig. 4. Distribution of a practical system’s node importance degrees.
TABLE VI
INDEXES OF HEBEI’S SOUTHERN POWER NETWORK’S RECONFIGURATION
SCHEMES BASED ON SKELETON NETWORK
B. Example II
To test the validity of strategy for large-scale power systems,
the southern power system of Hebei province in China is investi-
gated further. After transformers are represented by equivalent
branches (it is necessary for solving power flow), the system
consists of 500 nodes including equivalent transformers’ vir-
tual nodes and 610 branches including transformers’ equiva-
lent branches. It is supposed that all source nodes are energized,
other nodes and branches are deenergized. First, all nodes’ im-
portance degree are calculated and normalized in term of max-
imum . Their distribution in the ascending order is shown as
Fig. 4, where important nodes ( larger than 0.92) only account
for 9.2% (46 nodes). Furthermore, the population size and
maximum iteration step take value of 30 and 100 respectively,
reconfiguration is accomplished. Indexes of first six skeleton
networks preferred by dispatchers are listed in Table VI. It is ev-
ident that reconfiguration burden are relieved considerably and
most important nodes are covered. According to available states
of equipments, dispatchers could choose any scheme as recon-
figuration target and transform it into operation sequences. Con-
sequently, the strategy proposed could improve dispatching per-
formance under uncertain system situations.
C. Discussions
The numerical examples show that the target skeleton-net-
works can be reconfigured for effective restoration of the power
system by the proposed method. It should be noted that black-
start is a distressing situation for operators and they usually
prefer to follow a plan prepared in advance. Despite this fact, the
approach proposed in this paper could provide operators more
1273
flexible choices once the plan determined previously cannot be
used due to uncertain system situations.
The time issue is always one of the most concerned aspects
of the restoration. The reconfiguration of the proposed skeleton-
networks can facilitate determination of the optimal restoration
sequences. Based on the skeleton network, the restoration could
be classified into two stages, namely skeleton-network recon-
figuration and general load restoration. The configuration of the
skeleton network shows that all power sources and some impor-
tant loads are taken as the restoration target in the first stage.
Because skeleton network is a subnet of original network, the
burden of reconstructing the network frame in short time could
be relieved considerably. At this stage, the restoration of gen-
eration units should be placed in the first place in order to in-
crease the initial system’s MW output. Once the power avail-
able has been increased, some important loads should be picked
up gradually. After the formation of the skeleton network, gen-
erator loading ability has been improved greatly so that it is
favorable to restoring loads more quickly in the second stage.
To some extent, the effect of skeleton-network reconfiguration
is crucial to general load restoration. A qualified skeleton-net-
work could pave the way for picking up load and extending to
whole network smoothly. In a word, the proposed method tries
to shorten the duration through distinguishing explicit stages
and constructing effective skeleton networks as a guidance of
restoration. The time consumption of a complete restoration
process based on each proposed skeleton-network is dependent
on the operating sequence that involves another optimization
process and requires further work.
VI. CONCLUSION
A novel skeleton-network reconfiguration strategy is pro-
posed through employing scale-free network topological
characteristics and DPSO. First, node importance degree is
introduced to rank sources and loads quantitatively. Secondly,
network reconfiguration efficiency, an evaluation index repre-
sented mainly by network structure and subjected to restoration
constrains, is defined to assess reconfiguration results. Then,
the DPSO technique is further employed to obtain the optimal
skeleton networks which are favorable to define restoration
target and relieve the reconfiguration burden.
The integrated black-start depends on reasonable restoration
target and feasible operation sequences. Because this paper fo-
cuses mainly on the first step, some problems suitable for being
investigated by stages, such as electromechanical transient anal-
ysis, restoration duration, etc., are difficult to be involved here.
As a result, further research is to develop detailed restoration
strategy based on skeleton network.
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Yan Liu was born in Tianjin, China, on November 1, 1973. She received the
B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in power system and automation in 1994 and 1997,
respectively, from North China Electric Power University (NCEPU), Hebei
Province, China, where she is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree NCEPU.
Her areas of interest include power system restoration, control, and applica-
tion of intelligent technology.
Xueping Gu was born in Hebei Province, China, in 1964. He received the
M.Sc. degree in 1988 from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, and
the Ph.D. degree in 1996 from from North China Electric Power University
(NCEPU), Hebei Province, China, both in electrical engineering.
He is currently a Professor of Electrical Engineering at NCEPU. He has pub-
lished more than 60 technical papers on domestic and international conferences
and journals. His areas of interest include application of intelligent technology
in power system, power system security and stability, and power system restora-
tion.