Abstract
Reactive power compensation with Capacitor Banks (CBs) is one of the most successful approaches used in distribution systems, mainly due to their versatility, long-term acceptance in the power industry, and reduced costs. Most allocation methods, however, lack specific strategies to handle the limited discrete nature of CBs sizes seeking to improve the overall optimization and computational performance. We present an algorithm for the Optimal Placement of Capacitor Banks (OPCB) in distribution systems by means of a hybrid Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA)–Exhaustive Search (ES) approach. The pollination process itself determines the sets of buses for placement, while CBs sizes and the final fitness values of each pollen are selected after a full-search is conducted in the sizing space. As the sizing phase works on the limited search space of predetermined discrete bank values, the computational effort to find the optimum CB capacity is greatly reduced. Tests were performed on distribution systems of 10, 34, and 85 buses with respect to the objective function, final losses, and voltage profile. The algorithm offers an excellent compromise between solution quality and computational effort, when compared to similar approaches.
Highlights
Technical losses can account for up to 13% of the power delivered in distribution systems [1], which, besides representing a challenging management problem, have profound social and economic impacts.Losses can be efficiently minimized with the adequate placement of compensation devices, such as shuntCapacitor Banks (CBs)
We propose in this work a hybrid algorithm mixing Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) and a limited Exhaustive Search (ES), namely
The results are compared against a regular “full” FPA algorithm, ES, and other OPCB
Summary
Technical losses can account for up to 13% of the power delivered in distribution systems [1], which, besides representing a challenging management problem, have profound social and economic impacts. The authors of [36] proposed an optimization technique for Economic Dispatch that uses parallel processing for boosting computing performance in large power systems. The CBs placement is carried out using FPA, and the limited search determines the optimal CBs capacities, working in a reduced set of buses defined in the first stage. As FPA is built under a single strategic parameter p, it can provide excellent convergence properties with a small population and few iterations [39,40] By combining both techniques, the prohibitive computing time of ES becomes viable, allowing the method to yield feasible and high-quality solutions in a robust and effective way.
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