Daily Volt/Var control in distribution networks with regard to DGs: a comparison of evolutionary methods

Issues such as reducing pollution of the environment, power system restructuring, the complexity of transmission/distribution systems expansion and technology enhancement of distributed generators (DGs) have provided sufficient incentives to utilize them in distribution networks. Optimal voltage/reactive power management is one of the most important subjects in this new structure. This paper presents a new approach for daily Volt/Var control in distribution networks in the presence of DGs. The objective function is weighted summation of voltage deviations and related costs of electrical reactive energy generated by DGs and capacitors and also electrical energy losses of distribution systems within 24 hours of the next day. New evolutionary methods like ant colony algorithm, genetic algorithm, tabu search, differential evolution and particle swarm have been used to solve the proposed Volt/Var control problem, which the results of these methods have been compared with applying on an IEEE 34 distribution test