Bus Clustering for Distribution Grid Topology Identification

Recovering the distribution grid topology is essential to perform several distribution system operator functions. Many algorithms that address the topology recovery problem have already been proposed in the literature. Most are based on a priori information regarding which buses are fed by which substation; however, this information might not be available because frequent grid reconfigurations change the distribution grid portion connected to each substation. This paper addresses the problem of assigning every substation the set of buses that it is feeding, given field data. First, the aforementioned task is cast as a nonconvex optimization problem. Second, a relaxed version of the optimization problem is solved via the alternating direction method of multipliers. Finally, the performance of our approach is validated through numerical simulations of realistic scenarios using a standard IEEE benchmark feeder.