Ordinal optimization for optimal Capacitor Placement and network reconfiguration in radial distribution networks

Capacitor Placement (CP) is a complex non linear mixed integer optimization problem that includes both integer variables that correspond to the locations at which capacitors should be placed and discrete variables that represent the number of capacitor banks that should be installed. Motivated to efficiently reduce power losses in distribution networks by CP and network reconfiguration (NR) using some of the intelligent soft computing approaches, we propose to use in this study ordinal optimization (OO) which relies on order comparison and goal softening to make the computation more efficient. We tested OO on 33 and 69 bus systems and compared experimental results with other recently published methods. The reduction in losses obtained using OO for CP and NR motivates further studies.