Enhancement of distribution system performance with reconfiguration, distributed generation and capacitor bank deployment

This paper presents a comparative study of optimal reconfiguration, distributed generation, and shunt capacitor bank deployment for power loss minimization and voltage profile improvement in distribution systems. A metaheuristic approach based on the grey wolf optimizer (GWO) algorithm has been proposed for solving this high-dimensional, nonlinear, constrained, combinatorial optimization problem. Two standard IEEE 33- and 69-bus radial distribution systems (RDSs), and a practical 83-bus RDS of Taiwan Power Company have been considered for this study. The solutions obtained are compared with one another and those in the recent literature which includes classical and non-classical, metaheuristic-based methods. Going further, the little-studied problem of simultaneous reconfiguration, distributed generation, and capacitor bank deployment has been solved. The results suggest that the GWO has excellent potential for solving complicated optimization problems in distribution systems and elsewhere.