Effective network reconfiguration with distributed generation allocation in radial distribution networks using water cycle algorithm

Abstract

This paper presents a novel application of watercycle algorithm (WCA) for optimal distribution network reconfiguration (DNR) and distributed generation (DG) allocation in radial distribution network (RDN). WCA is proposed to simultaneously have the optimal topology of RDN and get the optimal DG size and placement. The objective is to minimize power losses and the voltage profile index. in addition, study the variation in both voltage magnitude and voltage stability profiles. Loss sensitivity factor index is utilized to crop the candidate buses for DG allocation aiming to narrow the search space for DG sizing. Moreover, the graph theory is presented to get the fundamental loops that used to reduce the search space for DNR by limiting the infeasible configurations during the optimization process, where the connection matrix of the radial network is used to check the radial constraint of each configuration. The proposed method has been applied on two different RDN with different scenarios. The obtained results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in comparison with previous works in literature.