Abstract This paper presents a novel integer-value modeling for optimal under voltage load shedding (UVLS) problem. The real-value modeling of UVLS is encountered to some drawbacks which lead to an ineffective practical solution. The proposed integer-value modeling overcomes these drawbacks by considering the load feeders of load buses in the modeling as well as assigning interruption penalty factors and participation penalty factors to feeders and buses respectively. Applying these factors to the proposed UVLS integer-value modeling result achieving objectives such as minimizing the total number of participating feeders in the load shedding, minimizing the total number of participating buses in the load shedding, minimizing the total amount of load to be shed, minimizing the total interruption cost and combination sets of the objectives. Without any limitation of applying the proposed modeling to large scale networks, it is implemented on IEEE 14-bus and 30-bus test systems and the results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.