Abstract:
The capability of Photovoltaic (PV) system and Wind turbine (WT) in providing electrical power with clean and environment-friendly makes it ideal for distributed generation (DG) resource in distribution networks to meet power demand with lesser environmental effects. The distribution networks power losses are largely influenced by the location and size of the DG unit. This paper introduces an ant lion optimization algorithm (ALOA) for identifying suitable location and capacity of renewable energy based DG units for different distribution network systems. Loss sensitivity factor (LSF) is used to determine candidate buses for DG placement and voltage sensitivity factor (VSF) is used to select a suitable bus location from candidate buses for DG unit installation. The proposed ALOA is developed to deduce the optimal size of different types of DG units at the selected bus locations. The performance of ALOA is validated for IEEE 33 bus and 69 bus radial distribution systems. To highlight the superiority of the proposed algorithm, the results are compared with other algorithms in terms of power loss reduction and voltage profile. The proposed algorithm has given improved performance over other algorithms in terms of power loss reduction and voltage profile enhancement. Also, the response of ALOA under varying loading condition is presented to outline its effectiveness towards voltage profile enhancement and power loss minimization at different load levels.