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Islanding and Scheduling of Power Distribution

Systems With Distributed Generation
Mingrui Zhang, Member, IEEE, and Jie Chen, Student Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper presents a short-term power regulation

mechanism for post-segmentation power distribution systems in
the presence of severe fault or large disturbance. Firstly, load
priority is introduced into system separation and centroids of load
clusters are allocated at nodes with distributed sources, respecting
power balance and network connectedness. Secondly, fast power
ow calculation is performed on the primarily formed islands to
resolve load interruption for operational feasibility of partitions
from power quality perspective. Then the effect of distributed
generation uctuations on durable operation of subsystems with
various optimization objectives is examined. The load response
is instructed by the proposed cost-based pricing scheme contemplating consumers' willingness. In addition, the inuence of
network congestion and load controllability on results of economic
scheduling is investigated. Numerical results from the PG&E-69
distribution system are used to show the effectiveness of the developed model in radial structure load clusters. Illustration on the
IEEE 118-bus case further proves its robustness and practicability
for other distribution systems applications. This property is also
useful for transmission switching and micro-grid applications.
Index TermsDemand side management, distribution system,
economic operation, pricing mechanism, system partitioning.

NOMENCLATURE
Indexes:
Set of paths from node

to node .

Indices:
Index of node with DG.
Index of island.
Index of father node of node
Branch between node

on path

and node .

Index of node directly connected to node .

Index of node.
Index of IL.
Index of EV.
Index of DG.
Constants:
Central position of the peak in the Gaussian
distribution.
Standard deviation of the Gaussian distribution.
Price for charging delay of the th EV, in
Yuan/kW.
Price for discharging of the th EV, in Yuan/kW.
Interruption loss of the th IL, in Yuan/kW.
Gaussian function applied in the fuzzy inference
system.
Total number of islands.

Set of EVs in island .

Total number of nodes in the whole system.

Set of EVs at node .

Charging power of the th EV before islanding,

in kW.
Load demand at node after islanding, in kW.

Set of ILs at node .

Set of nodes on

Set of nodes in island .

Set of all nodes.
Set of all nodes with distributed sources.
Set of all nodes with EVs.
Set of ILs in island .

Manuscript received April 12, 2014; revised July 14, 2014 and November 08,
2014; accepted December 06, 2014. Date of publication December 30, 2014;
date of current version August 03, 2015. This work was supported in part by
the National High Technology Research and Development of China 863 Program (2013AA040302), in part by the Shanghai Natural Science Foundation
under Grant 13ZR1444400, and in part by the Shanghai Science and Technology
Council under Grant 13DZ1200403. Paper no. TPWRS-00500-2014.
M. Zhang is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China (e-mail: zmr@tongji.edu.cn).
J. Chen is with the State Grid Shanghai Songjiang Electric Power Supply
Company, Shanghai 201600, China (e-mail: chenjie@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPWRS.2014.2382564

Load demand at node

before islanding, in kW.

Generating power at node after islanding, in

kW.
Generating power at node before islanding,
in kW.
Maximum discharging power of the th EV, in
kW.
Real power output of the th DG, in kW.
Maximum available generation power of the th
DG, in kW.
Upper limit on power curtailment of the th IL
user, in kW.
Time step of the dispatch period, in hour.
Node directly connecting multiple DGs.
Input variable of the fuzzy inference system.
Imaginary part of the admittance between node
and , in S.
Nominal capacity of the th EV battery, in kWh.

0885-8950 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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Real part of the admittance between node

, in S.
Total number of nodes in island .

and

Reactive power demand at node before

islanding, in kVar.
Reactive power demand at node after islanding,
in kVar.
Initial reactive power interaction between the
th EV and grid, in kVar.
Upper limit on reactive power curtailment of the
th IL user, in kVar.
Nominal capacity of the inverter system of the
th EV, in kVA.
Nominal capacity of the inverter of the th DG,
in kVA.
Nominal capacity of branch
, in kVA.
Initial SOC of the th EV battery at the
beginning of the dispatch period, in %.
Lower bound on the state of charge of the th
EV battery, in %.
Upper bound on the state of charge of the th
EV battery, in %.
Availability of the th EV, in binary.
Upper limit on nodal voltage, in p.u.
Lower limit on nodal voltage, in p.u.
Availability of the th IL, in binary.
Weight of node .
Charging efciency of the th EV battery, in %.
Discharging efciency of the th EV battery, in
%.
Volatility of generation power, in %.
Load growth rate, in %.
Variables:
Curtailment of charging load of the th EV, in
kW.
Discharging power of the th EV, in kW.
Real power transaction between the th EV and
grid after islanding, in kW.
Charging power of the th EV, in kW.
Generation curtailment of the th DG, in kW.
Real power curtailment of the th IL user, in kW.
Real power loss in the th island, in kW.
Decision variable of node , in binary.
Total demand side management cost of islands
on an hourly basis, in Yuan/h.
Reactive power transaction between the th EV
and grid after islanding, in kVar.
Reactive power output by the inverter system
of the th DG, in kVar.
Reactive power curtailment of the th IL user,
in kVar.
Reactive power loss in the th island, in kW.
Apparent power on branch

, in kVA.

State of charge of the th EV battery during the

dispatch period, in %.

Voltage magnitude of node , in p.u.

Average voltage deviation in island , in p.u.
Angle deviation between node

and , in rad.

I. INTRODUCTION

ASCADING outages that rapidly spread across interconnected power system may result in signicant disruption
and system collapse. To defense against the catastrophe of
system-wide blackout, islanding is resorted to as a last line
since local remedial measures are too slow to work in the face
of extreme contingencies [1], [2].
There is a considerable literature covering many important aspects of power system islanding. A two-step spectral
clustering controlled islanding algorithm that has minimal
power-ow disruption and satises the constraint of generator
coherency is presented in [3]. In [4], a three-phase searching
method to nd the optimal splitting boundary is proposed
based on dening the domain of each generator by power ow
tracing algorithm, determining an initial splitting boundary
with grouping information of generators, and getting the nal
splitting boundary by rening the initial one. System splitting
problem is also studied by an ordered binary decision diagrams
based three-phase method in [5]. Time to intentionally island
a severely disturbed power system for stable operation is obtained by decision tree approach in [2]. Reference [6] applies
slow coherency theory to the identication of the weakest link
in the whole system and determines the appropriate grouping of
generators. The efcacy of the proposed controlled islanding is
demonstrated by simulating on a large complex power system
under different severe contingencies [1]. Moreover, the notion
of strong and weak connections among buses is formulated in
[7] to partition a power network with a multi-attribute objective
function.
To better utilize distributed resources and improve energy efciency, many more distributed generators (DGs) are expected
to be integrated into the existing power systems. Deploying DGs
in islands after system splitting is one of the main research areas
in maximizing the use of DGs to the benet of network performance measures [8][10]. As renewables such as wind and solar
sources introduce several new features for power system operation, the uncertainty and non-controllability of wind and solar
production challenge the durable operation of these load clusters. The inevitable mismatch of generation and load may result in power imbalance of partitions, which requests re-forming
new balanced islands. In effect, the strong intermittency and
variability of wind and solar resources may lead to frequent actuations of circuit breakers or other switchgears in traditional
network restructuring, which also hampers swift recovery from
islanded operation condition to normal operating condition. Although the implementation of conventional energy storage facility in grid-scale applications helps relieve power deviations
in the divided subsystems by storing or releasing energy with
speedy response, the xed location and capacity may connes
its contribution towards mitigating generation and load uctuation [11]. Capricious circuit switching cannot be avoided if no
energy storage system is included in certain load cluster after
system segmentation. To enlarge power regulation margin, more

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energy storage systems should be congured in power distribution system, but the system economics will be decreased by
high cost of the existing large-scale energy storage technologies. Similarly, benets in application of controllable generation
units like full cells and intern combustion engines to islanding
operation are eroded due to their limited capacity, location and
ramp rate. Concerns regarding environment protection and fuel
consumption may also be raised other than big expense in equipment conguration, operation and maintenance.
As an alternative of conventional energy storage device, electric vehicles (EVs) show great potential to offer regulation service with fast ramping capability. The upcoming penetration of
EVs is an excellent opportunity for efcient utilization of distributed energy storage and demand response [12]. Since the EV
battery investment cost is incurred for the transmission needs of
the owner, the regulation cost undertaken by system regulator is
relatively lower than that of traditional energy storage device.
Thus, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology is adopted in this work
collaborating with traditional curtailment of interruptible loads
(ILs) to accommodate islanded load groups to power deviations.
The main contributions of this paper include:
The cost-based pricing scheme for EVs is proposed respecting the willingness of users for regulation service provision;
The aggregated scheduling of EVs and traditional ILs instructed by different optimization objectives is performed
on islands with different topologic structures under various
scenarios of power imbalance;
Inuence of voltage deviation, transmission congestion
and availability of EVs and ILs on operational economics
of islands is quantitatively investigated.
The difculty lies in the appropriate utilization of standby EV
batteries coordinating with other controllable loads under network constraints of the highly stressed subsystems. The solution given in this paper develops a cost-based pricing mechanism that applies fuzzy control theory to evaluate the suitability
of dispatching specic EVs to balance potential deviations and
satisfy a wide variety of physical restrictions in islands.
Section
II
describes
the
partition
program.
Section III presents the modeling of demand side management
(DSM) based optimal operation for islands. Simulation results
are provided in Section IV. Section V concludes the paper.
II. SYSTEM PARTITIONING SCHEME
A. Network Partitioning and Islands Merging Scheme
The procedure to island the whole distribution system is delineated in the islanding stage in Fig. 1, which is described as
follows.
1) The node with the DG giving the maximum active power
output in the original distribution network is found and set
as the original point to search the island.
2) Demand and weight of all nodes with DGs are set to be zero
except the original point. Nodes with no load are merged
with their neighbor nodes to simplify the network.
3) After the simplied graph is formed, an island is obtained
by solving (1) under constraints (2)(5).
4) The island then is dened as a new DG node whose power
output is the difference between generation and load power

5)

6)

7)
8)

if there is more than one node in the island. Otherwise, the

DG at the original point is labelled.
If all DGs are labelled, the islanding procedure goes to step
6. Otherwise nodes merged in the simplication are restored and a new graph rooted at the unlabeled DG having
the maximal power output is formed, after which the procedure reverts back to step 2.
The while procedure comes to the end if no loads are directly connecting multiple DGs. Otherwise it means that
the load power is greater than the output power of any
single DG connected to . Merging of these islands is then
performed to form a larger new island. When load is either a controllable load or
, the procedure goes to
step 7. Otherwise, the program switches to step 8.
If the power surplus of the new island is greater than zero,
the island is further shrunk to be a new DG node, and returns to step 5. Otherwise it goes back to step 6.
The generation spillage of the islands is preferentially supplied to the loads directly connecting to them with higher
priority. The merging process of islands is over and the initial islanding scheme is yielded.

B. Objective Function of Islanding

The optimal islanding strategy is stated as
(1)
subject to

(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
The achievable reliability level is maximized in (1). When
is 1. Otherwise, it is set
node is included in the island,
zero. Constraint (2) indicates that total load power included in
the island should be less than or at least equal to the sum of
generation power. All nodes connected with DGs are included
in the islands as their decision variables are xed to be 1 in (3).
The network connectivity constraint is given in (5) to suggest
that if node is selected into the island, at least one father node
pertaining to node on path
should be added into the island.
Of note, the islands obtained at present may be infeasible in
real operation because a range of operational restrictions are not
considered. Furthermore, the volatility in renewable generation
is not respected in the islanding stage. In what follows, the DSM
is adopted to carry out the adjustment of islands and optimize
their operation with the occurrence of power perturbation.
III. LOAD SIDE MANAGEMENT IN SUBSYSTEMS
A. Adjustment for Primal Islands
Islands preliminarily procured above should be adjusted by
DSM for feasibility check based on results from fast power ow

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(12)

(13)

(14)

(15)

(16)
(17)
(18)
(19)
(20)

(21)

(22)
(23)
(24)
(25)
(26)
(27)
Fig. 1. Diagram of the two-stage optimization framework.

(28)
calculation. The optimized operation model displayed in the optimal operation stage in Fig. 1 is given by

if
if

,
(29)

(6)

if
if

,
(30)

(7)
(8)
(9)
subject to:

(31)

(32)
(33)
(10)
(11)

Total DSM cost is minimized in (6) [13]. The average voltage

deviation in a subsystem is formulated in (7). Active and reactive power loss are minimized in (8) and (9), respectively.

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It is noticed that one objective is selected from (6)(9) to produce the corresponding optimal DSM scheme under constraints
(10)(33). Power balance is enforced by (10). In order to accurately assess the impact of renewable integration on balancing
islands it is necessary to adopt varying output of DGs. The extent to which the generation varies is measured by in (11).
The load growth is outlined by (12) where evaluates the extent to which load power increases. Since the power deviation
could be balanced by means of renewable power curtailment in
case of generation surplus, the DSM-based scheduling schemes
of subsystems are implemented in a sequence of generation deciency scenarios, featured by (11) and (12), respectively. The
relationship between node power and voltage is revealed in (13)
and (14). Load controllability is involved here and power injection at nodes is modulated by the EV charging level, discharging
power of EVs and IL shedding, which is indicated in (15)(18).
If the th EV is unavailable for discharging during islanded operation,
is set to 0. Otherwise, it equals to 1. When the th
IL is unavailable,
is 0 and vice versa. Constraint (19) assigns the range of voltage deviation. The transmission power is
conned by (20). Real and reactive power loss are formulated
in (21) and (22), respectively. It is important to point out that
no programmable DGs are employed here. The supposition is
made here to isolate this work to other issues like unit commitment problems in [14]and [15]. Under this assumption, the
real power outputs of DGs in (23) appear as known parameters. The reactive power of DGs is automatically produced ensuring convergence in power ow computation. Load shedding
of ILs are constrained in (24) and (25) respectively in which reactive power is shed in proportion to the real one by default,
while charging power curtailment and discharging of EVs are
restricted by (26) and (27) respectively [16], [17]. Analogously
to the reactive power of DGs, the reactive power transaction between EVs and grid is bounded by (28). Assume that reactive
power of EVs will be scheduled only when that of DGs reaches
its limits. The real power is specied in (29). Of note,
is
xed to zero when the th EV is in charging, which is equivalent to ILs under this circumstance.
is forced to be
if the th EV discharges, which is prescribed in (30). Moreover,
the present battery content is related to the previous and future
one by replenishing or discharging the battery in (32), which is
limited by (31) where the lower and upper bound are dened.
It is noted that the constructed model is a snapshot of dynamic
operation, and it continuously runs on a rolling basis with updated information in regard with renewables and load power for
practical purpose. Constraint (33) dictates that generation curtailment should not exceed the maximum production level.
B. Pricing for System Entities
Fuzzy logic theory is applied to evaluating users' subjective
willingness. The Gaussian functions are utilized in the fuzzy
inference system to determine memberships of willingness and
corresponding prices, which are in the form
(34)
The input is users' willingness and output is the bidding price.
The pricing rule is devised that users longing for participating
in regulation market offer low price while those resistant to allowing the operator to use their batteries request higher prices.

The output ranges from the possible lowest cost to the highest
one. In pricing charging delay, the lowest cost is zero and the
highest one is sum of interruption loss and battery lease expense. In pricing EV discharging, the lowest cost consists of
cycling wear and energy loss while the highest one includes battery lease expense and interruption loss besides battery energy
loss and cycling wear [18].
IV. CASE STUDIES
All tests are performed on a PC with Intel Core i5-3210M
CPU@2.5 GHz and 8 GB RAM. These models are implemented
in AMPL. The optimal islanding problem is solved by solver
CPLEX 12.2, double checked by Gurobi 5.6. The optimal operation problem concerning the minimization of the DSM cost is
addressed by solver MINOS, double checked by LOQO, while
the others are settled by solver SNOPT and further testied by
CONOPT.
A. PG&E-69 Distribution System
The PG&E-69 distribution system integrated with DGs is illustrated in Fig. 2. Weight for critical load, traditional load, and
featherweight load is set as 100, 10, and 1, respectively. Parameters of DGs are provided in Table I, and the network data can
be found in [19].
and
are set as 1.2 and 0.85, respectively.
is determined from power ow calculation result
when operating in normal state with full load before islanding.
The rated power of EV is 3 kW. For the EV eet modeling
truncated Gaussian distributions (TGD) for battery SOC at arrival and charging probability are used, with parameters as in
Table II. Battery capacity was considered to be uniformly distributed (UD) between 6 and 30 kWh [12]. The number of EVs
deployed at node 34, 40, 13, 58, 68, and 53 are 8, 20, 3, 20, 22,
and 15, respectively. The parameters of fuzzy interface system
to price EVs' charging and discharging are tabulated in Table III.
The energy cost is 0.3 Yuan/kWh and the battery investment
cost averaged on an hourly basis is 0.086 Yuan/kWh in current
market [18], [20]. Thus the cycling loss is 0.057 Yuan/kWh if
the charging and discharging efciency are 90%. It is anticipated
that the lowest battery lease cost per hour is 0.086 Yuan/kWh
and the highest one is 0.258 Yuan/kWh. The interruption prices
of ILs are listed in Table IV [21].
The boundary of ve islands is shown in Fig. 2. It is worth
remarking that 56.11% of total load is restored. Among the
unserved loads, 21.49% are unimportant loads and the rest are
uncontrollable ordinary loads. For comparison, 28.32% and
54.46% of total load are restored by the heuristic islanding
algorithm and graph-based algorithm implemented in the same
system. respectively [22], [23]. The priority over other schemes
is also backed by the fact that all critical loads are restored,
which is purpose of controlled islanding. From the utilization
of DGs point of view, only 0.46 kW is curtailed from
generation as there is no more controllable load in . All other
DGs are fully utilized to localize power balance and avoid
wind/solar spillage. A portion of load at node 43, 21, 69, and
53 are restored, which equals 23.99 kW, 13.1 kW, 5.54 kW, and
21.8 kW, respectively. The execution time in decision making
for islanding is 0.25 s. Costs of each island are depicted in
Fig. 3 with various power uctuations. It is observed that higher
variability is always accompanied by higher cost when more

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Fig. 2. PG&E-69 distribution system with 6 DGs.

TABLE I
LOCATION AND CAPACITY OF DGS IN PG&E-69 SYSTEM

TABLE IV
CURTAILMENT BID DATA OF ILS

TABLE II
EV DATA PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS

TABLE III
PARAMETERS OF GAUSSIAN FUNCTIONS FOR EV USERS'
WILLINGNESS AND CHARGING DELAY/DISCHARGING PRICES

power support from EVs and ILs is required. However, the

power loss of subsystems is substantially diminished for better
load distribution after DSM. Detailed results are depicted in

Fig. 3. DSM cost and power loss of subsystems in PG&E-69 system.

Fig. 4. More ILs are shed and EVs are scheduled to discharge if
generation power signicantly decreases. The average voltage
deviations in a count of islands are listed in Table V with the
spent computer time.
It is observed that the voltage deviations in Table V may be
unacceptable for quality power supply. Accordingly, the voltage
deviation prole in
is illustrated and optimized by (7), which
is revealed in Fig. 5. It is apparent that the voltage deviation is
signicantly reduced and power loss is also kept at a low level
through proper curtailment of ILs and deferred charging of EVs
at certain locations.
The reduction of real power loss instructed by objective (8)
is realized on , of which results are provided in Fig. 6. The

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Fig. 4. DSM results of subsystem

Fig. 6. Power loss in island

with generation power undulations.

Fig. 7. Power loss in island

with the occurrence of power deviations.

TABLE V
AVERAGE VOLTAGE DEVIATION IN EACH SUBSYSTEM
IN THE PRESENCE OF GENERATION FLUCTUATIONS

Fig. 5. Voltage deviations of island

with DG power uctuations.

effect of system loss reduction is overriding as EVs and ILs balance the local power demand and reduce distant power transfer.
The optimal DSM approach to reducing reactive power loss is
studied on
in a similar manner. It is found in Fig. 7 that both
real and reactive power are minimized at the same time.
As load variability is not considered above, the inuence of
load increase after islanding is examined on
for illustrative
application. As shown in Fig. 2, load power at node 66, 67,
68, and 69 are transmitted from
on the unique path and
line power of
,
,
, and
increases if
more loads are to be served. This denitely burdens transmission system in islands. To avoid line overload, the transmission
power is conned to pre-contingency state through DSM, which
is shown in Fig. 8. It can be concluded that line power ow is
limited to desirable level under varying load growth scenarios.

Fig. 8. Transmission power in island

with network congestions.

Although it is slightly costly with discharging of EVs and interruption of expensive ILs, line power controllability is achieved
to prevent potential system component outages. Better load distribution is captured contemplating transmission security criterion, even in abnormal operation state like island.
B. IEEE 118-Bus System
The topological structure of the IEEE 118-bus system integrated with ve DGs is shown in Fig. 9. The site and size of
DGs are presented in Table VI [5]. It is hypothesized that EVs
interface with the system by EV aggregators and there are 1000

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Fig. 9. IEEE 118-bus system with 5 DGs.

TABLE VI
SITE AND SIZE OF DGS IN IEEE 118-BUS SYSTEM

TABLE VII
VOLTAGE DEVIATION IN SUBSYSTEMS WITH GENERATION VARIATIONS

TABLE VIII
EFFECT OF LOAD CONTROLLABILITY IN

Fig. 10. DSM cost and power loss of subsystems in IEEE 118-bus system.

EVs each [12]. The number of aggregators at node 3, 27, 31, 49,
56, 94, and 105 are 6, 30, 12, 10, 20, 15, and 10, respectively.
After the implementation of (1)(5), the whole system is divided into three zones, of which computation time is 0.29 s.
Power supply of up to 40.30% of total load is recovered and
all critical loads are served. Results presented in Fig. 10 and
Table VII are accordant with those of the PG&E-69 system case.
It is recognized that strong variability in DG output leads to considerably high cost, particular for large-scale power systems.
If no new ILs are introduced, island
in the IEEE 118-bus
system is capable of withstanding power variation up to 43.77%

OF

IEEE 118-BUS SYSTEM

of total generation. It is deduced from Table VIII that the partition can withstand larger generation perturbation when more
traditional loads are controllable. The effect will be more pronounced if more EVs are extracted from traditional ILs while
the maximum tolerance to DG power variation decreases once
discharging of EVs becomes in part unavailable.
Voltage regulation on
is performed by tuning bounds
of tolerant voltage deviation in (19). It is speculated from
Fig. 11 that stringent limit on nodal voltage entails coordinated
real and reactive power output of ILs and EVs.
Once fault occurs on line of vital importance in post-islanding
system, the topology of load cluster will vary, which may incur
overload of adjacent lines as shown in Table IX. There is a
tremendous power uprush on
after
is tripped

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C. Discussion of Solution Features

Fig. 11. Voltage regulation by DSM in

of IEEE 118-bus system.

TABLE IX
TRANSMISSION POWER ON CRITICAL LINES IN

OF

IEEE 118-BUS SYSTEM

The advantages of the optimization technique listed below

give the reason why it is adopted in this paper to improve the
effect of DSM on performance of the islanding and scheduling
strategy.
1) The superiority of the islanding approach over others is
manifested by the comparative analysis with the heuristic
islanding algorithm and graph-based algorithm. More
loads are restored while the reliability is considerably
improved, particularly for critical loads.
2) The insensitivity to problem scale benets efcient solving
of large-scale problems, which is reected by the contrast
between results from two systems, i.e., the PG&E-69 distribution system and the IEEE 118-bus system.
3) The proposed approach strikes a good balance between
computational efforts and solution quality. The optimized
results can be obtained in short time with the constrained
hardware resources.
Besides, the drawbacks of the developed optimization
method are mentioned as follows.
1) Multiple types of solvers are required to address the twostage problem since there is no solver general enough to be
directly applicable to various kinds of problems.
2) Only the suboptimal solutions are guaranteed by the
solvers when dealing with complicated nonlinear problems, making it a tedious task to identify whether the best
solution is attained.
D. Evaluation of System Realization

Fig. 12. Cost and scheduling results of DSM restricted by power ow capacity.

out. To relieve transmission burden on certain lines, curtailment

of ILs has to take place with charging delay of certain EVs as
illustrated in Fig. 12. Discharging of some EVs will also be initiated with tighter limit on line capacity, which accounts for
higher cost. In the meanwhile, the generation curtailment of
DGs is employed in the face of transmission bottleneck. It is
claried that ILs and EVs at node 94, 86, and 92 are not involved
under this circumstance because they are not on the transmission
path of concern. The modied DSM strategy succeeds to modulate line power to an acceptable level.

It is worth remarking that the realization of the islanding and

scheduling methodology entails continuous system monitoring,
fast data processing and remote control based on real-time communication technologies. Most of these functionalities can be
achieved by the existing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system already applied to real power systems
[24], [25]. Some adaptation to local conditions of the splitting
and energy management of islands includes:
1) Circuit breakers equipped with synchronizing device and
remote control unit are required to be implemented on
feeders to perform the automatic separation and reconnection at each node of the real network.
2) Intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) such as smart meter,
load control terminal unit, smart charger and battery management system should be positioned to collect the generation and consumption information, and command the
wind/solar curtailment or demand response.
3) The data transmission burden will be eased by means of
high bandwidth communication technologies. Also, more
powerful solvers facilitate the fast data analysis. Emerging
technologies such as supercomputers and the parallel
computation have potential to reduce the time of decision
making. The overall efciency can be further improved
with the optimized control architecture (e.g., hierarchical
structure, distributed mode).
V. CONCLUSION
The load response based economic operation strategy is proposed in this paper for post-contingency power systems incor-

ZHANG AND CHEN: ISLANDING AND SCHEDULING OF POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS WITH DISTRIBUTED GENERATION

porated with DGs after islanding. The following conclusions are

in order:
1) The tractability and efcacy of the adaptive islanding technique is reected by the fact that reliability level in power
supply is substantially improved, especially for critical
loads based on numerical tests on different systems.
2) The system instability is limited to a minimum region as
soon as possible by the optimized operation scheme for
islands considering power quality, system efciency and
transmission security criterion.
3) The appropriate utilization of ILs and EVs instructed by the
cost-based price mechanism eases operational cost of islands and circumvents unnecessary switching of lines and
power equipment, which benets system swift recovery.
4) The self-sustainability, resiliency and operability of islands
are reasonably strengthened by DSM measures. This property is particularly useful for power system applications
where ensuring deliverability is important in the context
of renewable resources assimilation.
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Mingrui Zhang (M09) received the B.S., M.S., and

Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Tongji
University, Shanghai, China, in 1994, 2003, and
2008, respectively.
He is presently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tongji University, Shanghai, China. He is a visiting scholar at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, from February 2009 to February 2010, funded by the China
Scholarship Council. His research interests include
distributed generation and micro-grids, energy management and optimized operation of electric power systems, and rail transit
power systems.

Jie Chen (S13) received the B.S. degree from

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China,
in 2011, and the M.S. degree from Tongji University, Shanghai, China, in 2014, both in electrical
engineering.
He was a Visiting Graduate Student at Hong Kong
Polytechnic University in 2013. His research interest
mainly focuses on economic operation of micro-grids
and energy management systems in electric power
distribution networks.
Mr. Chen is a Student Member of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering (CSEE).