Optimal reconfiguration and capacitor placement are used to reduce power losses and keep the voltage within its allowable interval in power distribution systems considering voltage, current, and radial condition constraints. An effective method and a new optimization algorithm using ‘‘Culture’’ is designed. CA is a meta-heuristic method proposed by Reynolds. In CA each individual of the population described in terms of a set of behavioral traits. Traits can be modified by means of socially motivated behavior and individual’s experiences are collected, merged and generalized in the belief space. This belief space is communicated with the future generation, if the future generation’s belief space is better than the previous generation then the belief space is updated, otherwise discarded. The algorithm is applied and tested on 16,33,69,118 and 119 bus IEEE test systems to find the optimum configuration of the network with regard to power losses. Five different cases are considered as mentioned below, and the effectiveness of the proposed technique is also demonstrated with improvements in power loss reduction, through MATLAB under steady-state conditions.
Case #1. Only network reconfiguration;
Case #2. Only capacitor placement;
Case #3. First, network reconfiguration and then capacitor placement
Case #4. First, capacitor placement and then network reconfiguration;
Case #5. Network reconfiguration and optimal capacitor placement, simultaneously;