Distribution Substation Dynamic Reconfiguration and Reinforcement-Digital Twin Model

The proliferation of electric vehicles will increase demand and alter the load profiles on final distribution substations quicker than traditional reinforcement techniques can respond. As it is nontrivial to determine in advance, to street level granularity, where and when vehicles will charge, a more flexible approach to substation reinforcement is preferable to the existing rip-out-and-replace technique for an overloaded transformer. Distribution Substation Dynamic Reconfiguration (DSDR) combines reinforcement using parallel transformers with reconfiguration algorithms to flexibly operate the substation in the face of uncertain loading conditions, by dynamically switching transformers in and out of service. This paper presents a digital twin and a benchtop scale model of the DSDR substation for the development and evaluation of such algorithms, along with two algorithms for optimizing substation technical losses. Initial results show that on a single tested substation model, efficiency increased by 5.40% with Net-Zero Year 2050 load profiles versus traditional reinforcement.