RECONFIGURATION OF DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM WITH DISTRIBUTED GENERATION

Abstract

The electrical power distribution system can be reconfigured with the help of sectionalizing and tie switches. By varying the status of the switches, different topologies are obtained so as to transfer loads between the feeders while maintaining the radial structure of the network. The advantages achieved by distribution system reconfiguration are loss reduction, load balancing, voltage profile improvement and enhancing system reliability. Nowadays, a significant increase is observed in the deployment of small scale generation into the distribution system. This small scale generation is usually referred to as distributed generation (DG) and is located at or near the site close to customers. Due to numerous advantages ollered by the DG units, their penetration in the distribution system is expected to increase in near future. It is therefore necessary to study the reconfiguration of distribution network with DG. - 'i'his work aims to develop a Genetic Algorithm based approach for network reconfiguration of distribution network in presence of DG. For this purpose, an optimization problem has been formulated to minimize the cost of active power losses and power purchased from grid. The constraints on active and reactive power balance, system voltage magnitude, line loading and radial structure of network have been considered. The developed method has been implemented under MATLAB environment and tested on 33-bus and 69-bus test distribution networks. The obtained results have been compared with some of existing methods and have been found encouraging.