Branch Exchange in Electrical Distribution Systems

This paper presents a branch exchange (BE) algorithm to solve network reconfiguration problems. The proposed technique involves a matrix manipulation approach, which has been devised by analysing the node–arc incidence matrix of the distribution network. A set of observations made on the network matrix permits the successful implementation of the BE technique by matrix manipulation. The approach presented here is simple and produces rapid results. Moreover, it can be implemented on large networks and can be used either as an exhaustive BE or as a heuristic BE. This method has been applied to 33 bus and 70 bus electrical distribution systems for the purpose of network reconfiguration for minimizing real power losses.