Agglomerative Clustering-Based Network Partitioning for Parallel Power System Restoration

After a blackout, it is essential to restore the blackout area rapidly to minimize possible losses. In parallel restoration, the blackout area is first partitioned into several subsystems, which will then be restored in parallel to accelerate the restoration process. In order to ensure restoration reliability, each subsystem should have enough generation power and satisfy a set of constraints before triggering the parallel restoration process. This paper models this as a constrained optimization problem and proposes a partitioning strategy to solve it in three steps. In the first step, some existing methods and expert knowledge are used for initialization of the partitioning process. The second step ensures the satisfaction of modeled constraints. The third step operates greedily to find suitable partitions for parallel restoration. The proposed strategy is implemented and evaluated on IEEE 39- and 118-bus power systems. Evaluation results show that it provides adequate subsystems for parallel restoration. Unlike some existing partitioning strategies, the proposed strategy can be used to partition a power system into multiple subsystems in a single execution.