Simultaneous capacitor placement and reconfiguration for loss reduction in distribution networks by a hybrid genetic algorithm

There are two common strategies for technical loss reduction in electric power distribution networks: (a) the installation of capacitor banks to compensate the losses produced by reactive currents; and (b) the redefinition of the topology of electric distribution networks by changing the state of some sectionalizing switches to balance the load. Both strategies can be formulated as combinatorial optimization problems. The optimization problems for the first and the second strategies are usually known as Capacitor Placement Problem (CPP) and Network Reconfiguration Problem (NRP), respectively. In this paper, we propose a new approach based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) to solve both CPP and NRP simultaneously. The new approach makes use of two previously proposed and independent techniques for the CPP and the NRP. The performance of the new approach is compared with the performance of the two previously proposed techniques applied in a separate manner. The experiments show that the new method is more efficient regarding the metrics of power loss reduction and voltage profile enhancement.