Optimal capacitor placement and sizing in radial distribution systems for power quality

The cost and the quality of electrical energy are always the priority topics in power systems. Development of social life has caused increment in reactive power consumption in residential areas. It is obvious that the overloading of the line due to increased reactive power should be prevented in order not to cause high power losses and voltage drops. Therefore, shunt capacitors are prevalently used in distribution systems in order to solve these problems. In this thesis, optimal capacitor location and sizing in radial distribution systems are determined for the purpose of minimizing the power loss and the annual cost with voltage limit constraints. A fuzzy reasoning based decision maker and a cuckoo search optimization algorithm are used in this study in order to achive the desired operating conditions. Power flow analysis of the radial distribution system is performed using forward and backward sweep algorithm available in literature. The proposed methods in this study are simulated in MATLAB environment and verified on standard IEEE 9 bus radial distribution system. The results are compared with other methods in literature and the contribution in terms of the quality of solution is reported.