Electrical Power and Energy Systems 31 (2009) 589595

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Electrical Power and Energy Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes

A hybrid optimization approach for distribution capacitor allocation

considering varying load conditions
Alireza Sei a,*, Mohammad Reza Hesamzadeh b
a
b

Department of Electrical Engineering, Shiraz University, Iran

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 20 August 2007
Received in revised form 30 March 2009
Accepted 30 March 2009

Keywords:
Capacitor planning
Distribution network
Fuzzy set theory
Genetic Algorithm
Forward update scheme

a b s t r a c t
This work presents a new algorithm based on a combination of fuzzy (FUZ), Forward Update (FWD), and
Genetic Algorithm (GA) approaches for capacitor allocation in distribution feeders. The problem formulation considers three distinct objectives related to total cost of energy loss and total cost of capacitors
including the purchase and installation costs and one term related to total cost of produced power under
peak load condition. The novel formulation is a multi-objective and non-differentiable optimization problem. The proposed methodology of this article uses an iterative optimization technique based on Forward
Update approach which is embedded in a Genetic Algorithm framework. The fuzzy reasoning supported
by the fuzzy set theory is used for sitting of capacitors and the GA is employed for nding the optimum
shape of membership functions. The proposed method has been implemented in a software package and
its effectiveness has been veried through a 9-bus radial distribution feeder along with a 34-bus radial
distribution feeder for the sake of conclusions supports. A comparison has been done among the proposed method of this paper and similar methods in other research works that shows the effectiveness
of the proposed method of this paper for solving optimum capacitor planning problem.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The installation of shunt capacitors on radial distribution feeders is essential for many reasons. Some of these reasons are power
ow control, improving system stability, power factor correction,
voltage prole management, and losses minimization. Capacitor
planning must determine the optimal site and size of capacitors
to be installed on the buses of a radial distribution system. Many
approaches have been proposed to solve the capacitor planning
problem. For instance, the Ref. [1] formulated the problem as a
mixed integer programming problem that incorporated power
ows and voltage constraints. The problem was decomposed into
a master problem and a slave problem to determine the sitting of
the capacitors, and the types as well as size of the capacitors placed
on the system. Refs. [2,3] proposed heuristic approaches to identify
the sensitive nodes by the levels of effect on the system losses. Ref.
[4] adopted an equivalent circuit of a lateral branch to simplify the
distribution loss analysis, which obtained the capacitor operational
strategies according to the reactive load duration curve and sensitivity index. Moreover, optimal capacitor planning based on the
fuzzy reasoning was implemented to present the imprecise nature
of its parameters or solutions in practical distribution systems [5
7]. Several investigations have recently applied articial intelli* Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 711 2303081; fax: +98 711 6287294.
E-mail addresses: sei@shirazu.ac.ir, sei_ar@yahoo.com (A. Sei).
0142-0615/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijepes.2009.03.029

gence, AI, techniques to resolve the optimal capacitor planning

problem due to the growing popularity of AI. Refs. [8,9] presented
a solution methodology based on the simulated annealing, SA,
technique. It has implemented the solution methodology in a software package. A 69-bus example system has been tested by the
developed software. Ref. [10] applied the tabu search technique
to determine the optimal capacitor planning in Chiang et al. [8] distribution system, and compared the results of the TS with the SA. In
Refs. [11,12], genetic algorithm, GA, was implemented to obtain
the optimal selection of capacitors, but the objective function only
considered the capacitor cost and power losses without involving
operation constraints. The capacitor planning problem is formulated as a multiple objective problem. The formulation proposed
here in considers two distinct objectives related to total cost of energy loss, total cost of capacitors including the constant and variable costs. A term related to total cost of produced power under
peak load condition is considered under the varying load condition
scenario. The load ow restrictions, security and operational constraints like loading of feeders and voltage prole, maximum reactive compensation are mathematically modelled as the technical
constraints of the capacitor planning problem. The developed
methodology for the capacitor planning problem can be employed
under both the constant load and varying load condition. The varying load condition is addressed by designing two schemes, namely,
the Fuzzy Product Approach and the Effective Load Modelling Approach. Moreover, a combination of fuzzy reasoning and forward

590

A. Sei, M.R. Hesamzadeh / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 31 (2009) 589595

update approach along with GA solves the constrained and multiple objective problems. The proposed approach for the capacitor
planning problem assumes a radial distribution network in which
the customers are modelled as the constant active and reactive
power. Also, the harmonic effects of the capacitors are assumed
away from the current study.
The rest of this article is organized as follows: Section 2 describes a novel formulation of the capacitor planning problem. A
solution algorithm based on the combinations of fuzzy, forward
update, and GA approaches, FUZFWDGA, is developed in Section
3. Section 4 demonstrates the effectiveness of the solution algorithm on two distribution case study. Conclusions are nally made
in Section 5.

2. Mathematical model of the problem

The capacitor planning problem for radial distribution feeders
under varying load condition can be formulated as follows:

"

NC
X

Minimise

!
C inst C kVar  Q i

i1

NLL
X

KE 

N1
X

!!
Tk
Plossi;i1

 Tk

T peak

i0

k1

Under the constant load condition, the above objective function

can be reduced to the following objective function with the same
constraints:

"
Minimise

NC
X

!
C inst C kVar  Q i

KP 

i1

N1
X

!#
Plossi;i1

i0

At each load level, the security constraints of the distribution

network can be formulated as follows:

P g i  P di  V i

N
X



V j Y ij cos di  dj  hij 0

j1

Q g i  Q di  V i

N
X



V j Y ij sin di  dj  hij 0

j1

V min
 V i  V max
;
i
i

i 1; . . . ; N

 Pij  Pmax
;
P min
ij
ij

i 1; . . . ; N

 Q L;
Q Total
C

Q Total

NC
X

Qi

i1

Yij, bus admittance matrix elements.

, Total connected Var by capacitor banks for radial distriQ Total
C
bution network.
, Total Var of loads available in radial distribution network.
Q Total
L
The objective function developed in Eq. (1), consists three
terms. The rst term denotes the cost of energy loss obtained by
summing up the energy losses at each load considering varying
load condition, the second term includes the total cost of capacitors which includes the purchase and installation costs. Finally
the last term is the cost of produced power under peak load condition. Power generation plants are built according to the maximum
demand of customers. It is obvious that by reducing power losses,
the system operator can use the available generation capacity
more effectively. In this way, the KT peak has been added to the
objective function for considering the cost of produced power in
peak load. Regarding the constraints, Eqs. 3 and 4 point to wellknown load ow restrictions while security and operational constraints like voltage prole and loading of feeders have been formulated in inequality of 5 and 6. As a general rule, for reactivepower compensation, the maximum capacitor size should not exceed the connected reactive load. This results in a limited number
of available capacitor sizes for installing in the radial distribution
network. This concept has been formulated by Eq. (7) in the set
of constraints of the introduced objective function.

3. Proposed hybrid optimization approach for capacitor

allocation in radial distribution networks
3.1. Fuzzy modelling
Generally, one of the problems in distribution capacitor planning is sitting of capacitor banks. The sitting problem has its roots
in the large number of customers available in distribution
networks.
The fuzzy set, which is a generalization of the conventional
crisp set, extends the values of set membership from values in
{0, 1} to the unit interval [0, 1]. A fuzzy set can be dened mathematically by assigning a value to each possible elements of the set.
The application of fuzzy set theory in power system engineering
has been investigated by many researchers [6,1321].
As in Ref. [6], we dene the V and P as the fuzzy sets associated
with the voltage and the real power loss at each bus. The membership functions of the fuzzy sets V and P are denoted as lV and lP
and dened through the equations:

where:
KE, Cost per energy loss, $/kWh/year, under the constant load
condition scenario Kp is dened as KE  Tk, Cost per power loss,
$/kW/year.
NLL, Total number of load levels in a year.
N, Total Number of buses in radial distribution network.
Tk
, Active power loss of the i; i 1 branch at load level k
Plossi;i1
with a duration of T k .
Tk, duration of the kth load level.
NC, Total number of capacitors.
C inst , installation cost of the capacitor bank Q i in ($).
C kVar , cost of the capacitor bank in ($/kVar).
KT peak , cost of the active power loss during the peak load condition of the network.
Vi, voltage at bus i.
Pij, active power ow from bus i to bus j.
Pgi ; Q gi , the active and reactive power generations at bus i.
Pdi ; Q di , the active and reactive power loads at bus i.
Vs, ds, system bus voltages magnitudes and phase angles.

lV i e

W v 

Vi1
V max V min

i2
8

W Li

lP i e

 Pp

T;loss

where:








Wv: weighting factor of voltage membership function

V(i): voltage at bus i
Vmax: maximum permitted voltage
Vmin: minimum permitted voltage
Wp: weighting factor of real loss membership function
L(i): real loss for line between i and i + 1 buses
PT;loss : total power loss.

As in Eqs. 8 and 9, the bus voltage and the branch ohmic loss are
modelled as the fuzzy sets with the exponential membership functions. The membership functions of the bus voltages and the
branch losses have been designed such a way that the buses with
high quality voltages and the branches with low ohmic losses have

A. Sei, M.R. Hesamzadeh / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 31 (2009) 589595

higher membership in their associated sets. Ideally, a bus with a

voltage of 1 p.u. and a branch with zero ohmic loss have the membership of one in the fuzzy voltage set and the fuzzy real loss set. A
typical membership function with different weighting factors is
shown on Fig. 1.
Employing a fuzzy reasoning approach, we nd the fuzzy set
V\P. The new fuzzy set is the intersection of two previously dened fuzzy sets V and P. This new fuzzy set is used to nd the candidate bus for installing the capacitor banks, sitting problem. To do
so, the membership function of V\P can be calculated as:

ls i lV\P i minflp i; lV ig

10

Accordingly, the bus with the lowset ls(i) is selected as the best
site to install capacitor banks.
The proposed method is explained in detail for constant load
condition and then by developing two proposed algorithms, the
method for constant load condition is applied to varying load condition as a practical case in distribution systems.
3.2. Constant load condition
The solution algorithm for optimal distribution capacitor planning considering constant load condition, using a combined FUZ
FWD approach is summarized as follows,
Step 1.
Step 2.
Step 3.
Step 4.

Step 5.

Input network and constant load data.

Determine the membership functions by setting WV and
WP.
Run the power ow equations and nd each bus voltage
and each line loss.
Identify bus with the lowest membership function ls as
the candidate node for installing the capacitor bank
(sitting).
Find the optimum size of the capacitor in the candidate
place determined in step 4. In this step, all possible combinations of the available capacitor banks are determined.
Each combination will be evaluated at the candidate site
against the objective function. The combination of the
capacitor banks which have the minimum cost and can
satisfy all constraints will be selected.

Step 6.
(1)
(2)

Check the stop criterion. The stop criterion has been set as
follows;
All bus voltages and line currents are in the range
The difference of the objective function value at the current iteration and previous iteration is lower than a specied value called e.

If both stop criteria are true, go to the next step. Otherwise, go

to the step 3
Step 7.

Find the objective function of whole distribution network

with installed capacitors and considering the Wv and Wp
parameters of the membership functions. In this step,
we nd a capacitor planning schedule for the pair (Wv,
Wp).

By running steps 1 through 7 for a constant load in a radial distribution network, the objective value (optimal site and size of
capacitors) can be found for specic weighting factors of voltage
and real loss exponential membership functions (Wv and Wp).
On the other hand, by running a sensitivity analysis between
the membership function parameters, Wv and Wp, and the value
of objective function, it becomes clear that the shape of membership functions (Wv and Wp) had a direct effect on the objective value. So nding the best values of Wv and Wp for having the
minimum amount of objective function is of great interest.
Accordingly, we have embedded the steps 1 thorough 7 in a GA
optimization framework. The whole process, step 1 through 7, is
run for different values of the parameters (Wv and Wp). Doing so,
the hybrid approach will evolve to the nal optimum capacitor
plan.
The Genetic Algorithm (GA) as a meta heuristic optimization
methodology is proposed to nd the optimal membership functions. The main idea of GA is that the best member of a population
has the highest probability for survival and reproduction [22,23].
Tools applying GA are reported in the literature to be capable of
nding a global optimum for mathematical problems having a
multiplicity of local optimum and hard non-convexities. GA has
also proved powerful in the optimization process in various power
engineering applications [e.g., [24,25]].
Decision variables of the GA are dened as two variables which
are Wv and Wp. A typical chromosome is shown on Fig. 2. The GA
needs the denition of an initial population. The well known operators for genetic algorithm, namely, crossover and mutation, as explained in the literature on genetic algorithm theory [2426] are
used in this paper, too.
In this step, the original population grows through the addition
of new members, which are obtained from the crossover and mutation steps. This enlarged population is ranked based on a tness
function dened as follows:

Fitnesswi

Fig. 1. The typical membership functions for voltage and real power loss, the fuzzy
set elements are normalised to lie in interval [0.0, 1.0].

591

ObjValuewi If wi meets all constraints

B

If wi does not meets all constraints

11

In equation (11), wi is a sample chromosome, B is a large number and ObjValue (wi) is the Objective value for chromosome wi.
The proposed hybrid optimization method of this paper for
optimum distribution capacitor planning has depicted on Fig. 3.
As it is clear from Fig. 3, the objective function of distribution
capacitor planning problem is minimized in two steps, namely,
by FUZFWD approach in installing capacitor banks and by GA
method in nding Wv and Wp parameters. This feature is one of
the unique powerful aspects of the proposed method for radial distribution network planning which leads to very promising results.

592

A. Sei, M.R. Hesamzadeh / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 31 (2009) 589595

wv

wp

Fig. 2. A sample chromosome of the voltage and real power loss coefcients.

Fig. 3. The proposed hybrid optimization method.

In the next section, we apply the hybrid optimization method to

radial distribution networks with varying load condition as a practical situation in distribution networks.

3.3.2. Method 2 effective load modelling approach

In this methodology the effective load of each bus can be found
by following formula,

3.3. Varying load condition

T i  Si
SEffk ENoL
i1 PNoL
k1 T k

The load that an individual customer or a group of customers

presents to the distribution system is constantly changing. In order
to consider the varying load in optimum distribution capacitor
planning, the following steps are proposed;
Step 1:

Step 2:

Digitizing of load curve to small time intervals so that

the power on each interval can be modelled as a constant load
Using one of the two following methods for capacitor
planning considering varying load condition.

12

Where in Eq. (12), NoL is the Number of Load levels, Ti is the Duration of ith load level and Si is the ith load level in p.u.
After nding the effective load of each bus by using its load
curve, the optimum capacitor planning can be done by considering
the effective loads for each bus (constant loads) and using the proposed methodology of Section 3.2.
We should note that since the real load might be lower than the
effective load which we used for the capacitor planning problem,
we might expect some overvolatges at some nodes during such
periods.
4. Case study

3.3.1. Method 1 fuzzy product approach

In this approach, by performing the load ow program for each
load duration, the membership function of bus voltages and sectional losses can be calculated. In this view, there are sets of bus
voltage and sectional loss membership functions. Then after, the
method reaches to a unique set of bus voltage and also loss membership functions by using fuzzy reasoning concept. That is, by
applying fuzzy AND operator to different sets of bus voltage membership functions and also sectional loss membership functions,
we face only one set of voltage membership function as well as
one sectional loss membership function for each bus. From this
point forward, the algorithm keeps the same procedure as constant
load condition for nding the candidate bus for installing capacitor
bank.

4.1. Constant load condition (9-bus system)

The 9-bus radial distribution feeder of [26] is taken as the test
feeder. The rated voltage is 23 kV. The system is shown on Fig. 4.
For the test feeder, yearly loss cost is selected to be US$ 168/kW
[27], and the voltage limits are 0.9 and 1.1 p.u. The total reactive

Fig. 4. The 9-bus feeder.

593

A. Sei, M.R. Hesamzadeh / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 31 (2009) 589595

load of the system is 4186 kVar that leads to 27 practical combinations of mentioned standard capacitor banks available in [26].
Applying the load ow program on this feeder before compensation, the cost function and the total power losses are US$ 131675
and 783.8 kW, respectively. The maximum and minimum bus voltage magnitudes were 0.9929 and 0.8375 p.u., respectively, where
the voltage of the substation (bus number zero) is assumed to be
1 p.u. The results of capacitor planning after applying the hybrid
optimization method are collected in Table 1.
The hybrid optimization technique (our method in Table 1),
which is a new idea and powerful methodology, gives the best cost
and loss reductions with a promising voltage prole among all
other methodologies proposed by Refs. [26,27,2,3,6,13]. Also, the
results of loss reduction of our method are better than those of
the heuristic methods of [3,2], and the analytical method of [28],
and even better than that of the fuzzy expert system (FES) presented in [16], with the same advantage of compromising between
the voltage and losses importance. In Section 4.2, the hybrid optimization method has been applied to a 34-bus radial distribution
feeder with varying load condition as a practical case study.
4.2. Varying load condition (34-bus system)
A radial distribution network with 34 load points is used to simulate the proposed hybrid optimization methodology for capacitor
planning considering varying load condition. The data of this test
system has been taken from reference [26] of this paper.
The system voltage is 11 kV. Before compensation, the cost is
US$ 37 212, this is based on the previously dened cost function,

the active and reactive losses are 221.5 kW and 65.04 kVar,
respectively, and the voltage limits in per unit are 0.9417 and
1.0.
Considering total connected reactive load of 2873.5 kVar of this
system, 19 capacitor bank combination can be used. For applying
the hybrid optimization method to various load condition the loads
of 34-bus system have been modelled as three load level, namely,
0.5 p.u for a period of 1000 h, 0.8 p.u. for a period of 6760 h, and nally 1 p.u. for a period of 1000 h in a year. Considering the mentioned three load levels, the system performance in each load
level has been collected in Table 2.
Applying the hybrid optimization methodology for each load level leads to results as collected in Table 3. Also the optimum values
of exponential membership function parameters are collected in
Table 4.
It is worth to note that, in case of S = 1 p.u., our methodology
leads to a radial compensated feeder with minimum voltage of
0.95068 p.u. And total cost of US$ 27593 that is much better than
proposed scenario of capacitors in Ref. [26] which leads to a minimum value of 0.95017 for bus voltages with a total cost of US$
28373. Based on these gures, the same conclusion that has been
made from the rst feeder could be extracted from this feeder as
well. The hybrid optimization technique proposed by this paper,
which is a new idea and powerful methodology, gives the best cost
and loss reductions with a promising voltage prole among all
other methodologies proposed by Refs. [26,27,3,2,6,13] of this paper. Also, the results of loss reduction of our method are better
than those of the heuristic methods of [3] and [2], and the analytical method of [28], and even better than that of the fuzzy expert

Table 1
Results for all methods applied to the 9-bus feeders including original data and our solution results.
Bus No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Real Loss(kW)
$ Cost
Min. V (p.u.)
Max. V (p.u.)

No QC (kVar)
Placed

QC Using
Method [4]

QC Using
Method [5]

QC Using
Method [7]

QC Using
Method [8]

2100
2500

1050
1050
1950

3300
1800
1050

2850
2100
1050

900
707
119736
0.9000
1.0000

900
705
119420
0.9029
1.0000

900
692
117571
0.90004
1.0012

900
691.6
117479
0.9000
1.001

QC Using
Method [6]

QC Using
Method [1]

QC Using
Our Method

3300
3900

3600

3600
4050
450
1200

4050
1650

1200

600
783.8
131675
0.8375
0.9929

900
689
117330
0.9006
1.006

150
600
681.28
116320
0.90014
1.007

686
117095
0.9003
1.007

Table 2
34-bus radial distribution feeder performance before optimum distribution capacitor planning for each load level.
Load level (S,p.u.)

Real loss (kW)

Reactive loss (kVar)

Min. V (p.u.)

Max. V (p.u.)

Energy Loss (MWh)

1.0
0.8
0.5

221.72
139.16
52.855

65.11
40.881
15.535

0.94169
0.95385
0.9716

1
1
1

221.72
943.53
52.855

Table 3
34-bus radial distribution feeder performance after optimum distribution capacitor planning for each load level.
Load level (S,p.u).

Real loss (kW)

Min. V (p.u.)

Max. V (p.u.)

Optimum site and size of capacitors (Bus Name-kVar)

1.0
0.8
0.5

160.5
101.185
39.276

0.95068
0.96087
0.97563

1
1
1

9900
9900
9600

24450
27450
30150

30450
30300
34450

32300
34450

34450

594

A. Sei, M.R. Hesamzadeh / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 31 (2009) 589595

Table 4
Exponential membership function weighting factors for each load level found by GA
for the 34-bus radial distribution network.
S (p.u.)

1 p.u.

0.8 p.u.

0.5 p.u.

Weighting factors
Wv
Wp

16.411
7.5614

6.6602
2.4611

16.762
2.7304

system (FES) presented in [16], with the same advantage of compromising between the voltage and loss importance. Table 4 shows
the optimum weighting factors of membership functions found by
GA.

By using switchable capacitors, distribution system operators

can apply optimum size and site of capacitors of relevant load
duration to radial distribution feeder. But this approach is not an
industrial solution for distribution radial feeders. Generally, distribution system operators are interested for one scenario of capacitors for whole duration of one year. In this way, this paper
proposes two methodologies of fuzzy product and effective load
approach for meeting need of distribution system operators as described before in Section 3.3.
4.2.1. Fuzzy product method
The results of optimum capacitor planning by this method for
considering varying load condition have been collected in Table

Table 5
Optimum capacitor planning using fuzzy reasoning method for the 34-bus radial distribution network.
Real loss before optimum capacitor planning
(MWh)

Real loss after optimum capacitor planning

(MWh)

Optimum site and size of capacitors (Bus Name-kVar)

1218.105

891.1324

9900

27600

30150

34450

Table 6
Optimum capacitor planning by fuzzy reasoning method applied to each load level independently the 34-bus radial distribution.
Load level (S,p.u).

Real loss (kW)

Reactive loss (kVar)

Min. V (p.u.)

Max. V (p.u.)

Percent of reduction

1
0.8
0.5

162.97
101.19
44.118

47.725
29.574
12.794

0.94892
0.96087
0.97832

1
1
1

26.5
27.5
16.53

Table 7
Optimum distribution capacitor planning using effective load model the 34-bus radial distribution.
Real loss before optimum capacitor planning
(MWh)

Real loss after optimum capacitor planning

(MWh)

Optimum site and size of capacitors (Bus Name-kVar)

1218.105

900.3798

9600

27450

30450

34450

Table 8
Applying optimum distribution capacitor planning scenario for each load level using effective load method.
Real loss (kW)

Reactive loss (kVar)

Min. V (p.u.)

Max. V (p.u.)

Percent of reduction

163.92
103.13
39.301

48.062
30.249
11.532

0.94863
0.95928
0.97489

1
1
1

26.06
26.11
25.64

20

20

18

18

16

16

14

14

12

12

Wv

Wp

Load level (S,p.u.)

1
0.8
0.5

10

10

0
0

50

100

150

200

250

chromosome

300

350

400

0
0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

chromosome

Fig. 5. The Weighting Factors (Wp and Wv) vs. different iterations for 34-bus radial distribution feeders at effective load of 0.788 p.u.

A. Sei, M.R. Hesamzadeh / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 31 (2009) 589595

5. By installing the optimal scenario of capacitors in 34-bus radial

distribution feeder the results of Table 6 are valid. Regarding the
Table 6, the last column is the percentage of energy loss reduction
in comparison with the network without capacitors at the same
load level.
4.2.2. The effective load model
The effective load of 34-bus system according to Eq. (12) is
0.78858 p.u. The results of optimal capacitor planning using effective load model have been collected in Table 8.
As shown in two simulation results of Fig. 5, applying GA for
nding the best values of exponential membership function
weighting factors has converged to 6.646 and 17.428 for Wp and
Wv, respectively.
By applying the resulted scenario of capacitors to the network,
the performance of network under each load condition is as collected in Table 8.
Like Table 6, the last column of Table 8 is the percentage of lost
energy reduction compared with the network without capacitors
at the same load level.
Finally using the results of the Tables 5 and 7, the real energy
loss of the 34-bus example system before installing the capacitor
banks is 1218 MWh. If we nd the size and site of the capacitor
banks using the effective load modelling approach, the real energy
loss will be reduced to 900 MWh. Similarly, the application of the
fuzzy reasoning approach for addressing the varying load condition
can reduce the real energy loss to the 891 MWh which is 10 MWh
lower than the previous case. This can be considered as a signicant gain in terms of real loss reduction for the whole period of
the year, 8760 h/year. Hence, as we expected, the fuzzy reasoning
approach can nd the size and site of the capacitor banks better
than the effective load modelling approach under varying load
conditions.
5. Conclusion
This article presents a new combined optimization methodology for optimum capacitor planning problem. The proposed methodology of this article uses an iterative optimization technique
based on Forward Update approach which is embedded in a Genetic Algorithm framework. The fuzzy reasoning supported by the fuzzy set theory is used for sitting of capacitors and the GA is
employed for nding the optimum shape of membership functions
of bus voltages and line losses. The proposed approach optimises
the objective function of the capacitor planning problem in two
subsequent steps. The method developed herein is tested on 9bus distribution system and the results have been compared with
similar research works. The comparison shows the effectiveness of
proposed method in case of investment and improving the performance of the distribution network. In addition, to verify the practical feasibility and performance of the proposed algorithm for
practical cases, a 34-bus test system has been used.
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