Abstract: This paper presents a new and efficient approach for capacitor placement in radial distribution systems that determine the optimal locations and size of capacitor with an objective of improving the voltage profile and reduction of power loss. The solution methodology has two parts: in part one the loss sensitivity factors are used to select the candidate locations for the capacitor placement and in part two a new algorithm that employs Plant growth Simulation Algorithm (PGSA) is used to estimate the optimal size of capacitors at the optimal buses determined in part one. The main advantage of the proposed method is that it does not require any external control parameters. The other advantage is that it handles the objective function and the constraints separately, avoiding the trouble to determine the barrier factors. The proposed method is applied to 9, 34, and 85-bus radial distribution systems. The solutions obtained by the proposed method are compared with other methods. The proposed method has outperformed the other methods in terms of the quality of solution.
Abstract: This paper presents a novel approach for optimal
reconfiguration of radial distribution systems. Optimal
reconfiguration involves the selection of the best set of branches to
be opened, one each from each loop, such that the resulting radial
distribution system gets the desired performance. In this paper an
algorithm is proposed based on simple heuristic rules and identified
an effective switch status configuration of distribution system for the
minimum loss reduction. This proposed algorithm consists of two
parts; one is to determine the best switching combinations in all loops
with minimum computational effort and the other is simple optimum
power loss calculation of the best switching combination found in
part one by load flows. To demonstrate the validity of the proposed
algorithm, computer simulations are carried out on 33-bus system.
The results show that the performance of the proposed method is
better than that of the other methods.