Optimal feeder-switches and pole-mounted RTUs relocation on electrical distribution system considering load profile

During recent years, distribution systems have received great attention mainly due to the restructuring and privatization processes of the power sectors that many countries are undergoing. This has changed the utilities management towards capital controlled business where owners are trying to maximize their profits with cost optimization. Thus the most challenging tasks for the utilities are to reduce costs and improve reliability at the same time. There are very few research papers focusing on the interruption cost and/or life-cycle cost of the distribution system [1–5]. Furthermore, none of them considered outage cost and life-cycle cost of a large size system and load curve of distribution system, where modern optimization techniques such as genetic algorithm should be applied. This paper presents an efficient method for improving reliability on electrical distribution system by considering annual load curve changing, and failure rate changing data to relocate feeder-switches and pole-mounted RTUs in the main feeder. The design of distribution system is optimized by minimizing outage cost of customers and utility providers as well as the feeder device life-cycle cost considering feeder device relocation with approximate actual load profile. Genetic Algorithm is applied to solve the optimization problem. The customer cost and utility cost can be minimized with limited number of feeder-switches and pole-mounted RTUs.