Distribution System Reconfiguration and Capacitor Placement for Loss Reduction by Ant Colony Algorithm

High current amounts, low voltage level and radial structure assign high percentage of active power loss in distribution system. There are many means in reducing the active power loss of distribution networks; this paper introduces an ant colony algorithm to solve the optimal network reconfiguration and capacitor placement problem for power loss reduction and voltage profile enhancement in distribution networks. The ant colony algorithm was inspired from natural behavior of the ant colonies on how they find the food source and bring them back to their nest by building the unique trial formation. Ants of artificial colony are able to search for the successively shorter feasible routes by using information accumulated in the form of a pheromone trial deposited on the edge of their traveling path. The proposed approach is demonstrated employing one distribution network. Computational results show that by taking into account feeder reconfiguration and capacitor placement simultaneously, one can be minimize losses more efficiently by considering them separately.