A PSO Algorithm for Phase Load Balancing in Low Voltage Distribution Networks

Energy efficiency is a major concern for utilities. For electricity transmission and distribution companies, while efficiency can be achieved by replacing old equipment from the networks with newer devices, or incorporating into the existing infrastructure additional components, such as FACTS solutions, all these measures are costly and require major changes in the network, with added time and financial costs. These measures should be applied only after all other options, which do not incur additional costs, are exhausted. One of these measures is Phase Load Balancing (PLB). This paper proposes a PLB approach built using the Particle Swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The PSO-PLB algorithm is tested on a real low voltage (LV) electricity distribution network (EDN), and the results, measured in electricity savings though loss reduction, prove its efficiency.