An Efficient Formulation for Optimal Placement of Capacitor Banks in Distribution Feeders Connected to Time-Varying Loads

The capacitor placement in radial feeders is an efficient way to mitigate energy losses of distribution networks, where the power converted to useless heat is much higher than transmission system. These considerable power losses increase network operating costs and also decrease quality and quantity of delivered power. Shunt capacitors by compensating part of load reactive power reduce magnitude of feeder current and subsequent distribution losses. However, electricity demand variations with time affects power distributed through feeders and therefore have important role in energy losses determination. Thus, load variability may change the optimal places of capacitors, but considering whole load variations substantially increases the burden and computational time of capacitor placement problem in large-sized distribution systems. Therefore, current study poses an effective capacitor placement formulation for energy loss reduction in the presence of time-varying loads. The numerical results analysis demonstrates the good performance of the presented framework for the optimal placement of capacitor banks in radial distribution feeders with variable loads.