1. Introduction
Distributed generations (DGs) have become an attractive option for integrating power distribution systems due to their economic, technical, and environmental advantages
[1][2]. Although DGs can offer several benefits to the system, their installation is subject to their primary energy source’s availability and geographical location
[3]. On the other hand, DGs can cause undesired effects in the system, such as fluctuations in the voltage profile, increased fault current, and inversion in the power flow direction, etc.
[4][5]. These effects become more evident when DGs use renewable energy resources (RER). RER play an energetic role in resolving environmental and security issues. They have a probabilistic nature, such as wind speed and solar irradiation
[6]. Therefore, technical studies should be conducted to properly install DGs in passive systems, avoiding the degradation of reliability, system operation, and supply quality
[3].
In a radial distribution system (RDS), the reactive power flow is considered the main reason for power quality issues
[6]. The compensation of reactive power plays the leading part in power system planning. The capacitor banks (CBs) are treated as the familiar reactive power resources that offer loss reduction, voltage regulation, stability improvement, and a financial return for distribution companies when optimally installed in distribution systems
[3][7][8].
To reduce the overall production costs and improve system reliability, both the DGs and CBs are commissioned as real and reactive power injection sources
[7]. The installation of DG and the capacitor in the distribution network has various technical and economic benefits
[9]. These multiple benefits cannot be achieved without the appropriate allocation of the DGs and CBs in power system networks. Further, the optimal allocation of both DG and CB can be carried out using optimization techniques using several methodologies
[10]. The complete analysis of the existing works relating to the optimization is described in the following section.
The techniques proposed for the placement of DG and CB in distribution networks can be divided into four types: numerical, analytical, metaheuristic, and hybrid optimization
[10][11]. The analytical methods have fast convergence, but their computational time and complexity become high when the type and number of DGs and CBs increases
[12]. This is particularly true for multi-objective formulations with a large number of equality and inequality constraints. Analytical approaches require more robust algorithms to solve differential and nonlinear equations. In this respect, metaheuristic techniques are helpful in solving the distribution system problems which do not involve differential equations. However, the algorithms need to be appropriately tuned to reach the global solution for DG sizing and placement
[12][13].
Among various metaheuristic optimization techniques, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is the most widely used for the siting and sizing DGs. PSO has significantly better computation efficiency, i.e., its functional evaluation. A vital issue with PSO is the trapping of particles into local optima that could consume a large amount of time to converge to an optimal solution. Additionally, there is no guarantee that the optimal solution will be global optima. As a result, several research works highlighted the hybridization of the standard PSO with analytical approaches or other optimization techniques for achieving better results
[14]. By using a hybrid optimization technique, better optimization results can be produced by merging two optimization algorithms
[9]. Instead of searching in the whole area, the search space is limited by loss sensitivity factor (LSF), increasing the possibility of finding a good solution. After selecting the candidate buses by LSF, an optimizer finds the optimum size of DGs and CBs on the buses. Consequently, a fast convergence is achieved without compromising the siting and sizing aspects
[10][14].
2. Optimal Installation of DGs and CBs
A complete survey of numerous literary works associated with the optimal installation of DGs and CBs is elaborated in
Table 1 [15][16].
Table 1. Survey of prevailing research works with respect to optimal installation of DGs and CBs.
The existing works demonstrate the optimal allocation of DGs without considering the potential of the renewable resources. Further, optimal DG allocation combined with the potential assessment of renewable energy sources (RESs) could save time, effort, and planning for current and future DG unit installations
[28] for real-time systems. Herein examines the available renewable energy potentials (AREPs) at all the locations of IEEE 33- and 69-bus RDSs.
3. Conclusions
An AREP-based hybrid EGWO-PSO technique was proposed as a multi-criterion-multi-objective framework for the optimal re-allocation and re-sizing of DGs in distribution systems. It was observed that the AREP-EGWO-PSO technique could effectively re-allocate the DGs and re-size the capacity optimally. Notably, real power loss of the system was condensed significantly by up to 92.35% and 93.94% for 33 and 69 test systems, respectively, using AREP constraints. Further, the VSI of the system was greatly enhanced from its base value. Moreover, an excellent emission reduction had taken place by up to 69%, with a significant cost reduction of up to 10%. All these observed outcomes show superior performance compared with other existing optimization techniques. Notably, the AREP-based re-allocation and re-sizing of DGs offer closer performance with EGWO-PSO in all criteria (technical, economic, and environmental). Therefore, the AREP-based re-allocation and re-sizing of DGs using the EGWO-PSO algorithm can be employed to solve complex multi-objective problems for real-time systems.
The future developments accredited to dynamic load variations can be analyzed from the perspective of optimal power system operation. This research work can be extended to include reliability metrices with a reconfiguration of the distribution system. Moreover, a real-time potential assessment of an existing power system can be performed along with the reallocation of DGs based on AREP to validate the effectiveness of the proposed EGWO-PSO algorithm.