Challenge
In the past, Stedin has experienced power failures in its distribution grid. In addition to displeased customers, those events entailed expensive compensation payments for Stedin. Reliable energy distribution has always been Stedin’s core task, and so their main objective is to significantly reduce the SAIDI (system average interruption duration index) in their medium-voltage grids. Today there are several self-healing distribution grids in operation worldwide, but they are usually built for overhead distribution feeders, primarily by applying automatic reclosers. The Dutch MV distribution grid, however, consists of underground cables, which cannot be quickly repaired in the event of faults, nor can they be fixed with automatic reclosers. Therefore a solution had to be developed that would work for the Dutch network system.The self-healing algorithm is elegant, simple, and robust and works for almost all grid structures. The applied RTUs and the developed software are very stable.Dr. E. J. Coster, Expert Asset Manager Stedin