ON OPTIMAL DESIGN AND EXPANSION OF ELECTRICAL POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS

Abstract

Optimal planning of large-scale distribution networks is a multiobjective combinatorial optimization problem with many complexities. This paper proposes the application of improved genetic algorithm (GA) for the optimal design of large-scale distribution systems in order to provide optimal sizing and locating of the high voltage (HV) substations and medium voltage (MV) feeders routing, using their corresponding fixed and variable costs associated with operational and optimization constraints. The novel approach presented in the paper, solves hard satisfactory optimization problems with different constraints in large-scale distribution networks. This paper presents a new concept based on MST in graph theory and GA for optimal locating of the HV substations and MV feeders routing in a real-size distribution network. Minimum spanning tree solved with Prim's algorithm is employed to generate a set of feasible population. In the present article, to reduce computational burden and avoid huge search space leading to infeasible solutions, special coding method is generated for GA operators to solve optimal feeders routing. The proposed coding method guarantees the validity of the solution during the progress of the GA toward the global optimal solution. The developed GA-based software is tested in a real-size large-scale distribution system and the well-satisfactory results are presented.