urrent Index Based Load Balance Technique for
Distribution Systems
Whei-Min Lin, Member, IEEE
Department of Electrical Engineering
National Sun Yst-Sen University
Kaohsiung, Taiwan 804 China
Abstract:This paper presents a new load balance
algorithm for the three-phase unbalanced distribution
systems. Feeder load balance and phase load balance
were both considered to avoid feeder violations. Two
current indices were developed separately to deal with
the problem. This algorithm could confine the size of the
solution state-space, and avoid complex numerical
computations. Computer simulations show that this
algorithm is very effective in both the planning and
operational environments.
Keywords: Current index, Three-phase distribution
network, Reconfiguration
1. INTRODUCTION
Distribution feeders are generally three-phase
unbalanced, with a number of switches including the
normal-close sectionalizing switches and the normal-
open tie switches. These switches can be used to
perform load transfer among feeders.
Transformedfeeder loads could become more balanced
by using the switches to alleviate line overload and
enhance the operating efficiency. Similar ideas can be
applied to feeder phase balance. Although the inter-
phase switching is not a common practice in distribution
systems, phase balance is still important to prevent the
substation ground-current-relay from tripping. In
addition, the three-phase network reconfiguration can
also be conducted to reduce loss.
Distribution feeder reconfigurations can be studied
in two modes: i) the long-term planning mode; and ii)
the short-term operating mode. For long-term planning
mode, the objectives are to minimize the system losses
and to enhance system reliability with the projected load
0-7803-4754-4/98/$10.00 0 1998 IEEE - 223 -
Hong-Chan Chin
demand. In the shop-term feeder operating mode,
switching can be used to resolve the feeder
contingencies. Besides the planning problem, this paper
tries to develop an algorithm capable of dealing with the
short-term feeder contingencies.
A number of papers have dealt with the feeder
reconfiguration problems[ 1-61, Aoki et al.[ I] developed
a method which uses the load indices to balance loads.
A formula and the approximate power flow methods was
proposed in [5] and [6]. Many other methods using
mathematical programming techniques[4,7,8], expert
systems[9-11], fuzzy set algorithms[l2,13] and
optimization algorithms[ 141 have been proposed in
recent years. Most of the above approaches deal with the
balanced three-phase systems only. To satisfy the need
of a higher service quality of the next century, the
unbalanced three-phase-loads ought to be considered too.
With the advancement of communication and control
technologies, computer aided remote switching becomes
more and more feasible for a distribution management
system (DMS)[7], which makes the network
reconfiguration a more interesting topic in the
operational environment.
In this paper, a new algorithm is proposed to
search for the optimal network configurations. The
feeder and phase balance are both considered by the use
of current indices to indicate the 'degree' of imbalance.
Computer simulations were conducted to show the
effectiveness of this algorithm.
11. PROBLEM FORMULATION
A sample distribution system is provided in Figure 1.
Fig. 1 A sample distribution system
 There are two substations and four feeders in
Figure 1. In this paper, the "relier' feeder is defined as
the feeder to release load and the "burden" feeder is the
feeder to accept the load transfer. The notation ( X , Y ) is
used to denote the operation of openning switch X and
closing switch Y , for instance, operation (lb,3e) will
transfer load current Qe &om Feeder 1 to Feeder 3 by
opening a sectionalizing switch on the relief feeder and
closing the tie switch between these two feeders. Also
note that a proper switching needs to obey a few rules:
(a) Radial network structure must be retained.
(b) All feeder sections have to be served except the
faulty feeder section.
(c) The network structure should remain unchanged
except the switching statueses.
Notations used in this paper are illustrated below.
All the notations are defined on per-phase basis. That is,
three-phase ratings have to be converted into single-
phase ratings to be used in this paper.
Notations
RC,, : rated Ampacity of transformer Tk
RC, : rated Ampacity of feeder fi at feeder source
(substation)
ALTk: actual current loading (in Amp) of transformer T,
AL, : actual current loading ( in Amp.) of feeder fi
PR,,, : loading percent ratio ( PR) of the system
AL,,, : actual system loading in Amperes
= c AL,,
k
RC,,, : rated Ampacity of the system,
= 2 min W,, ,c RC, )
k 1
For a candidate switch, the post-switching PRs of the
relief feeder and burden feeder are calculated by
p& = ALfi ' RCfi for relief feeder
and
pRb = ALbfi ' for burden feeder
where
AL,, = max. [ phase current after relieving load ]
(phase)
AL,, 1 max. [ phase current after accepting load
(Phase)
The "ideal loading" of feeder fi is achieved when
PRfi = PR,,,. A system with all feeders loaded to the
same load percentage ratio is called a system with
"balanced feeder loads." Nctwork reconfiguration is
thus becoming a work to identify a proper set of
switches for load transfer, and the "ideal loading" on
each feeder will be pursued.
111. DEVELOPMENT OF METHODOLOGY
Two stages were designed for load balancing.
The first stage solves the feeder balance problem and the
second stage deals with the phase balance problem.
Two current indices were developed to describe the
level of feeder load balance and phase load balance. F,
is called the feeder balance index and P, is called the
phase balance index. A set B is used to store all FB's
after calculation, and a set U is used to store P$.
A. Current index FB
For a feeder overload, load transfer has to be
carried out by relieving the loads. The goal is to force
PQ on each feeder to a value close to PR,,,. For a
switching operation ( x , y > behveen the overloaded
feeder ( the relief feeder) and a candidate burden feeder,
the current index FB is defined by
where
(*)
APR = max [ IPR, - PRSys 1, lPRb - PRsys I ] (9)
PQax ,'s the highest feeder PR in the entire system.
(3)
With F, found for each candidate switch, the
optimal decision for feeder balance is to choose the
switching operation that has the smallest FB in B. In
(4)
other words, the feeder balance decision
(5)
FD(X,Y )= min { FB(X, Y) 1 FB(X,Y) E B } (IO)
B Current index P,
The second stage deals with the phase balance
(6)
problem. Phase balance has to be conducted by
exchanging feeder segments. That is, inter-feeder
switching is still used here since there is no inter-phase
3 (7) switching now nor in the foreseeable future. The current
index P, for the phase balance of a selected switching
operation can be defined by
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where
I, is the ground current relay setting. Dr,, is the
maximum current difference among phases, defined for
the relief feeder after switching operations. That is,
Db,, is defined for the burden feeder similar to
Equation (1 3).
With P i s found, optimal switching is the one with the
smallest P, in U. In other words, the phase balance
decision
IV. THE OVERALL SOLUTION PROCESS
The proposed algorithm can be described in the
following- steps.
- Table 1
Step 1. Input the network topology, rated capacities of
feeders, feeder section loads and the opedclosed
statuses of switches.
Step 2. Read in the current measurements fiom load flow
or SCADA.
Step 3. Identify the overload feeders as the set of relief
feeders [Er].
Step 4. Check [Er] value. If [Er] is empty, go to Step 5;
else go to Step 7.
Step 5. Identify the phase unbalance feeder in the set of
reliefs [Eu].
Step 6. Check [Eu] value. If [Eu] is not empty, go to step
7; else stop.
Step 7. Perfom load balance algorithm.
Step 8. Reconfigure distribution network.
In this algorithm, line current flow has to 'be
calculated by either the three phase load flow program,
synthesized customer billing data, or the real-time
current measurements. Feeders with line overload and
phase violations will be identified and Stored in [Er] and
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[Eu] separately. Feeder balance will first be resolved
then the phase balance, starting fiom the most severe
feeder. Phase balance will be conducted among phases
of the same feeder only. The process is repeated until
[Er] and [Eu] become empty.
For extreme cases where the system has been
stretched to its design limits, a feasible solution may not
exist. Dispatchers' attention has to be aroused to set
priorities to 1) expand the system by getting more
feeders; 2) shed load. However, planning department
should be notified under these circustances.
V. EXAMPLE
The sample distribution system in Figure 1 is used
for example. Each substation is assumed to have a per-
phase current rating of 400A. The per-phase current
rating of each feeder is 200 Amp, the ground current
relay setting is 40 Amp, and the PR,,. is chosen to be
1.10 to allow a 10% temporary overload. We also have
RCsys = 800A, ALsys = 67 1.6A, and PRsys = 0.84.
The pre-switching current flow at each switch
location is shown in Table 1. Feeders 2 is overloaded,
and Feeder 4 is unbalanced. These violations will be
resolved by the proposed algorithm in two stages.
1. Feeder Balance
At the first stage, Feeder 2 entered set [Er]. For
Feeder 2, neighboring feeders 1 and 4 are the candidate
burden feeders. In this system, there are five feasible
solutions to relieve loads, i.e., (2a,Id), (2c, Id), (2a,4c),
(2b,4c), and (2d,4c). The current indices of these
switching operations are listed in Table 2. For example,
in this table, the parameters of switching operation
(2d,4c) can be calculated for the relief feeder and the
burden feeder by
= m m [ 235-20.215-10,205-IO] =215A
PR, = AL,Q / RCQ = 2 15/200 = 1.075
Burden feeder f4
A L ~ ~ 4 = m a x [ 1 1 0 + 2 0110t10,
, 150+10]= 160A
PRh = ALhfd/ RCfd = 160/200 = 0.8
and
Table 5
APR=max [11.075-0.841,10.8-0.841~]
= 0.235PRm, = 1.1 Feeder Current (Amp.) flow after switching (3d,4d)

F,(~~,~C)=(APR/PR,~-PR~~)~=(O.~~
5/( 1.1-0.84))2
= 0.817
IB 180195 160 140
From Table 2, the optimal decision is FD(2c,ld). The
switching is thus [(2c,ld)]. Table 3 shows the resultant
feeder loading after this switching operation.
VI. CONCLUSION
Table 2
The Current indices of load balancing In this paper, a new algorithm has been developed
Relief ~ Candidate Current Burden for the network reconfiguration for the unbalanced
feeder Switching Index F~ feeder three-phase distribution systems. This algorithm adopts
operation a systematic approach to get a proper set of switching
operations by using branch exchanges. Current indicies
were derived to describe the level of feeder unbalance.
For every switching operation, only the neighboring tie
switches are considered to confine the size of the state
space. If the neighboring tie switches are not
satisfactory, this process will be expanded by
considering the feeders adjacent to the burden feeder in
the next search. Note that a global optimization
Table 3 problem is resolved by optimization in a local fashion.
Feeder Current (Amp.) flow after switching (Zc, Id) This process reduces the number of feasible states
drastically, and is based on the fact that feeder
f l fL f3 f4
contingencies need to be resolved by switching loads to
adjacent feeders. Test results can show that the
proposed algorithm is very effective even in the
operational mode.
IC 170 185 170 150

2. Phase Balance VII. REFERENCES

After solving the overload problem, the phase [ I ] K. Aoki, T. Ichimori, M. Kanezashi, "Normal state
imbalance is checked. Feeder 4 has a violation. Using optimal load allocation in distribution systems, "
the proposed algorithm, the unbalance problem can be IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, No. 1, 1987, pp.
solved by the switching operation (3d,4d), and Table 4 147-1 55.
shows the results. Table 5 lists the resultant feeder [2] K. Aoki, H. Kawabara, T. Satoh, M. Kanezashi, "An
loading after the switching operation (3d,4d). efficient algorithm for load balancing of transformers
and feeders, "IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, Vol. 3,
Table 4 NO. 4, 1988, pp. 1865-1872.
The current indices of the unbalance phase current [3] C. S. Chen, M. Y . Cho, "Determination of critical
Phase '
Candidate Current
imbalance switching Index pB
' Resulant
switches in distxibution system, "IEEE Trans. on
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(3d,4d) 0.5625 * Feeder3 of electrical distribution networks for resistive line
1
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losses reduction, "IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery,

f4 (2e,4c) ~ 1 Feeder 2
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[6] M. E. Baran, F. F. Wu, "Network reconfiguration in
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VIII. BIOGRAPHIES

Whei-Min Lin was born on October 3rd, 1954. He

received his BS-EE from the National Chao-Tung
university, MS-EE from the University of Connecticut,
and his Ph.D. EE from the University of Texas in 1985.
He worked at Chung-Hwa Institute for Economic
Research, Taiwan, as a visiting researcher after his
graduation. He joined Controt Data Crop. in 1986 and
worked with Control Data Asia in 1989. He has been
with National Sun Yat-Sen university, Taiwan, since
1989. Dr. Link interests are GIs, Distribution System,
SCADA and Automatic Control System. Dr. Lin is a
member of IEEE and Tau Beta Pi.

Hong-Chan Chin was bom on January 19, 1963. He

received his MS-EE degree fiom the National Sun Yat-
Sen University in 1991. Currently, he is pursuing his
Ph.D degree in the same University. His interests are
Energy Management Systems, Distribution Automatic
System.

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