Urban medium-voltage distribution network planning under a complete back-up regime

The thrust of this paper is to show how the reach of a planning algorithm can be extended to provide backup for urban distribution networks from adjacent primary substations, while also treating the planning constraints of thermally constrained networks with the likely increase in almost coincident loads such as electric vehicle charging, and the possible increase in coincident DER generation from increased roof-top photovoltaic production. An innovation is to use the slime mould algorithm to aid in producing a good initial network. The initial network is then passed to the planning algorithm to refine the final solution. The simulation results are based on realistic networks for target horizon Greenfield planning scenarios. The hypothetical (but relevant to consider) reduction in network investments that would result if the inter-primary substation back-up requirement is relaxed will also be explored.