A comparative study regarding the optimal placement of the DG sources

The paper presents a comparative study regarding the optimal placement of distributed generation (DG) sources into a electrical distribution system using an algorithm with two stages: in the first stage a clustering-based method is used to find the optimal partitioning of the network nodes into clusters, and in the second stage the optimal size of the DG sources in selected representative nodes (pilot nodes) is determined. The study carried out in this paper is focused especially on the selection mode of the pilot nodes. The proposed algorithm is tested on a 20 kV real rural distribution network with 24 nodes. The results demonstrate that the methodology can be successfully used to reduce the real power losses and improve the voltage magnitude in the nodes, in particular determining the optimal placement of DG without violation of the system constraints.