Holistic performance evaluation framework: power distribution network health index

In 2015, China National Energy Administration announced an action plan of 2 trillion yuan ($3225.8 billion) investment for power distribution network for the coming 5 years. The intent is to upgrade and modernise the network to meet multidimensional requirements, including distributed energy resources, high levels of security, quality and efficiency of power supply, and requests of CO2 reduction. A systematic, effective reform action would best be based on the comprehensive evaluation of network performance. However, in literature, previous works evaluated intensively on partial network performances, i.e. reliability, operation efficiency etc. Different from these approaches, this study proposes a holistic performance evaluation framework based on health index (HI) methodology. To cope fully with industry needs, the proposed HI system measures performances of two-level objects from power equipment to network scales. For each level, the corresponding HI is derived successively by determining object's health metrics, establishing a core set of indicators, building physics-based model, using data-driven and multiple health information fusion techniques. As part of a 3-year major research programme initiated by State Grid of China, the above work has been implemented in a software architecture. The fundamentals of distribution network HI framework are reported and discussed.