Topology and Parameter Identification in Electrical Distribution Systems using Spatial Priors

This manuscript presents novel methods that allow
the consideration of spatial priors derived from Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) for System Identification (SI), i.e.,
Topology Identification (TI) and Parameter Identification (PI),
in electrical distribution systems. The proposed methods are
designed to allow flexibility in the assumed measurement devices
and the integration of micro-Phasor Measurement Units (μPMU)
and Non-Phasor Measurement Units (NPMU), based on power
flow approximations and GIS data associated with the location of
measurement devices to deduct topological priors and cable and
line parameter ranges based on spatial relationships between
measurements. Based on a Mixed-Integer Quadratic Program-
ming (MIQP) optimization problem, the proposed SI approach
can handle measurement errors and noise. The presented method
is demonstrated on a benchmark 17-node Low Voltage (LV) grid
for three different scenarios, analyzing errors with respect to
topology and parameters, as well as the computational effort. It
is shown that by using spatial priors, the proposed SI method
performs better than existing techniques.