Graph Algorithms for Topology Identification in Electrical Medium Voltage Grids

The availability of realistic grid topologies is of central importance for the usability of grid models in calculations. However, especially in distribution grids, poor documentation, limited digitization and insufficient data quality can lead to faulty topologies, which result in errors in subsequent calculations. Methods of topology identification (TI) offer possibilities to use measurement data of grid quantities such as voltages to validate and, if necessary, correct the topology used for calculations. This paper presents robust methods for TI in medium voltage networks based on an adapted form of Prim’s algorithm, which is based on measurements of node voltage magnitudes. Methods to include spatial priors in the process are investigated. The developed method is applied to realistic models of mediumvoltage networks and its robustness to unadapted graph-based methods is shown. The correlation of injection correlations, as well as noise on the measured data, is addressed to show that the proposed methods can handle these conditions.