Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing, Vol. 18, No. 6, pp.

137-148, 2012 Copyright 2012, TSI Press Printed in the USA. All rights reserved

OPTIMAL CAPACITOR PLACEMENT FOR IMPROVING VOLTAGE PROFILE AND LOSS REDUCTION OF DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS BY GENETIC ALGORITHM
MEHRAN RASHIDI1, MOHAMMAD BAHMANI, AHMAD PEDRAM

Electrical Engineering Department, Islamic Azad University, Bandar-Abbas Branch, IRAN m.rashidi@iauba.ac.ir

ABSTRACT Fixed and switched capacitors are widely installed in distribution systems to achieve economic and operational benefits such as reactive power support, power factor correction, release system capacity, loss reduction, and voltage improvement. The achievement of the aforementioned benefits among other benefits of shunt capacitor installation requires optimal placement and sizing of these capacitors. In this paper a method based on genetic algorithms for the optimal sitting and sizing of shunt capacitor in a global distribution system is presented to improve voltage profile and reduce loss in network. The objective function consists of two non-differentiable terms, namely the cost of energy losses and the cost of capacitors to be installed. The capacitor cost is composed of a term to account for the fixed installation cost and another term to account for the capacitor purchase cost. The aim is to minimize the objective function while satisfying the systems constraints. Systems constraints are intended to be realistic in order to have a more reliable solution. The proposed method is implemented in MATLAB software and tested on 69-bus radial distribution feeders for evaluating of results correctness. Obtained results show that the proposed technique is capable of producing high-quality solutions in a reasonable computation time. Key Words: Distribution System Reconfiguration, Capacitor Placement, Loss Reduction, Voltage Profile Enhancement, Genetic Algorithms

1. INTRODUCTION The power system consists of three subsystems; generation, transmission and distribution. The distribution system transfers power from substations to loads. Researches indicated that 13% of total power generated is consumed as power losses at the distribution level [1]. Reducing the losses by the proper selection of shunt capacitance has been an important subject of study conducted by distribution engineers [2, 3]. Important benefits can be achieved through the optimal location and size of shunt capacitance. These include [4]: i) Reducing the peak power losses and energy loss, ii) Increasing the voltage level at loads to maintain the voltage profile within permissible limits, iii) Improving the power factor of the source, iv) Decreasing KVA loading and releasing the capacity for additional load growth can be done by the optimal location and size of shunt capacitors. For utilization of advantages of capacitors applications in distribution systems, it must be attention to finding optimum location and sizing, otherwise utilization of capacitors not only would not be associated with economical, but also it will put system to get into problems such as voltage destruction and increase of losses [5]. The problem of optimum location and sizing of distributed generation and shunt capacitors for loss reduction is a complex mathematical problem that have presented for investigation of the kinds of heuristic and analytic optimization ways. Among the optimization ways that have presented in solve this problem we can mention to genetic algorithm (GA) [6, 7], particle swarm optimization (PSO) [8, 9], ant colony optimization (ACO) [10] algorithm, and simulated annealing (SA) [11]. Several other research papers and reports addressed the subject of optimal capacitor placement distribution systems. The followings present a brief review of the work undertaken so far. In [12] a computerized trial and error heuristic method for optimizing the worth of revenue savings was presented. The savings are associated with released system capacity and the energy loss reductions. The non-uniform load distribution and conductor size were taken into consideration. Both fixed and switchable capacitor banks and their installation cost were also considered. The availability of the capacitor banks in accordance with the standards and released capacity cost were included as well. The effects of the main and the lateral branches were studied. The optimization process consists of three major steps. First is the choice of the location and type for the smallest standard size bank. The program scans all feeder branches moving along the branch toward the substation. Second is the improvement of the solution considering the standard bank size. The aim of this step is to increase the objective function. Third is the selection of the type of control for
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