LARGE-SCALE CAPACITOR PLACEMENT FOR DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS USING HYBRID DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION METHOD

C.-T. Su,∗ C.-F. Chang,∗ C.-S. Lee,∗∗ and J.-P. Chiou∗∗∗

Keywords

Capacitor placement, HDE, SA, GA

Abstract

This paper introduces a hybrid differential evolution (HDE) method to solve the optimal capacitor placement problem. The optimal capacitor placement problem is to determine the size and location of capacitors to be installed on a radial distribution feeder. It is a combinatorial optimization problem having an objective function composed of power losses and capacitor installation costs subject to bus voltage constraints that are commonly solved by employing mathematical programming methods. Due to the discrete nature of reactive compensation devices in the real-scale system, optimal capacitor placement leads to a nonlinear programming problem with integer (discrete) variables. This paper presents a new approach which employs HDE algorithm with integer variables to solve the discrete problem of the optimal capacitor placement. The proposed approach is demonstrated by employing two application examples. Numerical results show that the proposed method can achieve the same optimal solution as the one obtained from the exhaustive search but with much less computational burden. Moreover, comparison reveals that the proposed method is superior to some other commonly used methods in terms of power loss and costs.

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