OPTIMAL CAPACITOR PLACEMENT AND SIZING IN TABRIZ ELECTRIC POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM USING LOSS SENSITIVITY FACTORS AND PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION (PSO)

This paper presents a new approach in order to determine the optimal placement and size of capacitors in TABRIZ radial distribution system to minimize investment cost, energy loss reduction, improvement of voltage profile. Capacitor optimal placement & sizing are done by determination of loss sensitivity factors and PSO. Loss sensitivity factors can be introduced as an important parameter for sequencing of effective nodes in loss reduction. In this paper, combination of this method with PSO algorithm is used as a novel approach for optimal capacitor placement. This method is tested on a 10 buses distribution system and applied on the all feeders of Roshanaei and Golestan regions of Tabriz Electric Power Distribution Company (Tabriz, Iran). The findings clearly demonstrate the advantage of proposed method comparing with fuzzy-reasoning. Finally, investment return time, loss reduction percentage and capacity release of feeders have economically justified the practical usage of this method.