Branch-and-bound dispatching for feeder capacitors on distribution system

A new branch-and-bound algorithm for the placed capacitors dispatch on a distribution feeder in daily system operation is presented in this paper. An efficient branching method based on the heap data structure and a simple intuitive bounding rule based on the forecast hourly loads are proposed to reach an optimum capacitor dispatching schedule and minimize the total feeder losses. The operation constraints, including bus voltage limits and maximum allowable number of switching operations for each switchable capacitor, have been taken into account to optimize the real-time scheduling problem under varying loading conditions. The feature of the devised solution algorithm is their numerically fast computation and mathematically justified optimality. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, capacitors dispatch on a distribution feeder of the Taiwan Power Company (TPC) is studied. Numerical computation gives satisfactory results and illustrates that the devised approach locates the optimum schedule in greater loss reduction and less computation time than many existing techniques