Multi-objective Optimization Aiming to Minimize the Number of Power Quality Monitors and Multiple Fault Estimations in Unbalanced Power Distribution Systems

Utilities are already concerned about power quality monitoring. Several papers proposed strategies to choose the best locations to install power quality monitors, minimizing the investment cost while guaranteeing observability of power quality disturbances, mostly voltage sags. Although several papers studied this problem in power transmission systems, many problems remain unsolved for power distribution systems, such as power quality monitors allocation in unbalanced distribution systems, the impact of distributed generation in allocation methods, and allocation of power quality monitor for fault location. This paper makes contributions to all these three points. It proposes a multi-objective binary integer linear programming model for unbalanced systems, which is still suitable for power transmission systems. Furthermore, we analyze the connection/disconnection of a distributed generator, and our tests showed no need to change allocation regardless of the generator connection status. Finally, the allocation method reduced the multiple estimation problem; therefore, meter-based fault location methods could improve their performance with our allocation.