Combination of capacitor placement and reconfiguration for loss reduction in distribution systems using selective PSO

Capacitor placement and distribution network reconfiguration (DNR) are two useful methods in reducing the power losses of distribution networks. This paper proposes a selective particle swarm optimization (SPSO) to solve the optimal capacitor placement problem, the optimal feeder reconfiguration problem, and the problem of a combination of the two. The problem is posed as an optimization problem with an objective to maximize the loss reduction and improve the voltage profile. The optimization procedure is subject to some technical (maximum permissible branch current, maximum and minimum voltage limits and maximum permissible size of capacitors) and operational constraints (load connectivity and radial network structure). The proposed algorithm has been implemented and tested on two test systems from the literatures. The results obtained using the proposed algorithm are compared with the results obtained using different methods given in literature. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. In addition, simulation results show that the results of simultaneous capacitor placement and DNR is more effective than considering them separately.