Optimal capacitor placement and sizing using combined fuzzy-HPSO method

Abstract

This paper presents an enhanced approach for capacitor placement in radial distribution feeders to reduce the real power loss and to improve the voltage profile. The capacitor placement approach involves the identification of location for capacitor placement and the size of the capacitor to be installed at the identified location. The location of the nodes where the capacitors should be placed is decided by a set of rules given by the Fuzzy Expert System (FES). Capacitor location problem is a highly nonlinear problem and hence FES method is chosen. Then the sizing of the capacitors is modeled as an optimization problem and the objective function (loss minimization) is solved using Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization (HPSO) technique. A case study with an IEEE 34 bus distribution feeder is presented to illustrate the applicability of the algorithm. A comparison is made between the proposed HPSO approach and the classical Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm in terms of convergence and economic savings achieved to study the performance of both the optimization algorithms. The proposed HPSO algorithm is proven to give better results in terms of greater economic saving than the existing techniques.

International Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology, Vol. 2, No. 6, 2010, pp. 75-84