Analytical approach for adequacy assessment of cyber–physical multi-microgrid distribution systems with distributed generation

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the deployment of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in power systems. ICTs impart a cyber-physical nature to power systems, and though they improve the power system performance in various respects, they themselves are prone to random failures. With even more extensive penetration of ICTs expected to strongly characterise the future power systems, it is imperative to systematically study the impact of failures in cyber-physical power systems on the adequacy of power systems. With this as backdrop, the paper presents a novel analytical approach to study the impact of failure of various control layers and the cyber links between them on the adequacy of multi-microgrid distribution systems consisting of distributed generation resources such as wind and solar units. The main adequacy index of interest is Expected Energy Not Served, based on which the interruption costs can be computed. A case study is presented where the developed methodology is applied to a multi-microgrid distribution system where four different operation modes are realisable—normal, joint, islanding, and shutdown modes. The results are validated against those of a recently developed Monte Carlo simulation approach.