Summary Utilities confront challenges to optimally plan and develop the distribution grids both for reducing their imposed costs and for satisfying the customers' electricity needs. In this paper, optimal allocation of automatic and manual sectionalizing switches as well as protective devices is performed in presence of load flexibilities. Control devices could improve the duration‐based reliability indices, while protective devices could improve both duration‐based and frequency‐based reliability indices. In this paper, optimal incentives and penalties in the emergency demand response programs (EDRP) are determined based upon the customers' behaviors. The resulting optimization problem is then solved in 2 different scenarios: without load flexibility and incorporating EDRP. Finally, a standard reliability test system (RBTS4) is used to delineate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to analyze the probability of customers' contribution in EDRP based upon the predetermined contracts.

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Summary Smart grid has been developing nowadays as an initiative to operate modern electric distribution systems (EDSs) in a more reliable and efficient manner. With the decreasing price of the energy storage systems (ESSs), ESSs are highly recommended to be exploited in the operation of EDSs. In this manuscript, a comprehensive framework is introduced for ESS incorporation in service restoration process which proposes 2 roles for ESSs in the service restoration. As the first role, ESSs are exploited in the service restoration to re‐energize customers in interrupted zones, as their backup units. As the second role, ESSs are used in the service restoration to increase the number of interrupted customers which transferred to the backup feeders through acting as storage units. The proposed objective function of service restoration consists of customer interruption cost, energy not sold cost, cost of electricity production in combined heat and power units, and cost of ESS incorporation in service restoration. Moreover, the stochastic characteristics of ESS contribution in service restoration are considered in the proposed problem formulation. Further, the impacts of the uncertainties of the service restoration on the proposed approach for ESS incorporation are investigated. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is deliberated using a standard reliability test system (RBTS‐4). The obtained results show that the incorporating ESSs as storage units will lead to substantially improve the reliability level of EDS through increasing the adequacy of the EDS during service restoration process.

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