Distribution Network Planning Enhancement via Network Reconfiguration and DG Integration Using Dataset Approach and Water Cycle Algorithm

The integration of network reconfiguration and distributed generation (DG) can enhance the performances of overall networks. Thus, proper sizing and siting of DG need to be determined, otherwise it will cause degradation in system performance. However, determining proper sizing and siting of DG together with network reconfiguration is a complex problem due to huge solution search space. This search space mostly contains non-radial network configurations. Eliminating these non-radial combinations during optimization process increases computational overhead and may end up at local optimal solution. To reduce the searching complexity, this paper considers the discretized network reconfiguration via dataset approach. Water cycle algorithm (WCA) is used to obtain the near optimal solution of network reconfiguration, and sizing and sitting of DG. In addition, the power factor of DG is also optimized to reduce the power loss. The proposed method is tested on an IEEE 33-bus network and an IEEE 69-bus network considering different scenarios to show the effectiveness of simultaneous approach considering variable power factor. The results show that the discretization of reconfiguration search space avoids that WCA to get trapped in local optima. The proposed method out-performs other technique such as harmony search algorithm (HSA), fireworks algorithm (FWA), Cuckoo search algorithm (CSA) and uniform voltage distribution based constructive algorithm (UVDA) and improves the solution quality of IEEE 33-bus network and 69-bus network by 29.20% and 27.88%, respectively.