In this paper, effect of the islands number variation in restoration process is investigated and a graph based method for determination of optimum islands boundaries is presented. Also, the effect of number and location of black-start units on the restoration process is evaluated. In optimization process, objective function is minimizing Energy Not Supplied (ENS) and constraints are voltage margins in buses, transmission lines capacities and generators loading limits. The ENS is evaluated based on generation capacity allocation to demand loads method. Genetic algorithm (GA) is the base of optimization and a suitable chromosome coding is developed to network modeling and applying to the algorithm. In order to assess the capabilities of proposed method, the IEEE-118 bus network has been used as test system and the results of sectionalizing the test system to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 islands and the optimum boundaries of each island have been given in case studies section.
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