Distribution network reconfiguration for power loss minimization and voltage profile improvement using cuckoo search algorithm

[Display omitted] •The cuckoo search algorithm (CSA) is applied to solve the distribution network reconfiguration problem.•The proposed algorithm is used to check radial topology constraint for network optimization.•The proposed CSA method is applied to the IEEE 33-bus, 69-bus and 118-bus test networks for evaluation.•The proposed CSA method has better performance in comparison to PSO and other methods. This paper proposes a reconfiguration methodology based on a cuckoo search algorithm (CSA) for minimizing active power loss and the maximizing voltage magnitude. The CSA method is a new meta-heuristic algorithm inspired from the obligate brood parasitism of some cuckoo species which lay their eggs in the nests of other host birds of other species for solving optimization problems. Compared to other methods, CSA method has fewer control parameters and is more effective in optimization problems. The effectiveness of the proposed CSA has been tested on three different distribution network systems and the obtained test results have been compared to those from other methods in the literature. The simulation results show that the proposed CSA can be an efficient and promising method for distribution network reconfiguration problems.