The Effect of Optimal Placement of Distributed Generation Units on Voltage Profile Considering Faults in the Network

ABSTRACT: Recently, there has been great interest in the integration of Distributed Generation units (DG) at the electric distribution network. The foreseeable large use of DG in the future requires the electrical distribution network planners to properly take into account its impact in the distribution network planning. Distributed generation units are widely used for power loss reduction, voltage profile improvement and increasing the reliability of distribution network. Having no attention to appropriate site and size of DG may result in loss of aforementioned advantages. Many different methods are proposed to solve the problem of finding optimal location and size of DG, however, this problem become more complicated in the presence of network faults. This paper proposes a novel method for determining the location, size, and type of DG considering network faults to improve the voltage profile. Cumulative voltage deviation is used to investigate changes in the voltage profile. PSO algorithm is employed to achieve an optimal solution for this problem. With a numerical example on unbalanced IEEE 36 bus system as a test case, the superiority of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated. The effects of faults, DG placement, and simultaneous effect of faults and DG in this network are analyzed.