Hybrid Symbiotic Organisms Search for Optimal Fuzzified Joint Reconfiguration and Capacitor Placement in Electric Distribution Systems

Abstract

Network reconfiguration and capacitor allocation are two valuable tools to optimally manage distribution systems. In the present work, an efficient algorithm is proposed for the joint problem of reconfiguration and capacitor placement in distribution systems. The multi-objective problem is formulated to minimize objective functions of total network power losses, bus voltage violation, and branch loading deviations subject to different technical and operational constraints. To enhance exploration ability, the Symbiotic Organisms Search algorithm is strengthened with Particle Swarm Optimization capabilities to develop the Hybrid Symbiotic Organisms Search algorithm, which is applied to solve the proposed problem. Objective functions are fuzzified and aggregated by a geometric mean operator to have the same scales. The proposed joint optimization problem is solved with the introduced Hybrid Symbiotic Organisms Search algorithm in two different case studies of balanced and unbalanced test systems. According to obtained results that are compared with some well-known evolutionary algorithms, the superiority of the Hybrid Symbiotic Organisms Search algorithm is confirmed in terms of solution optimality and convergence speed.