A Review of Metaheuristic Techniques for Optimal Integration of Electrical Units in Distribution Networks

The optimal integration of electrical units, such as distributed generation units, power electronic devices, and electric vehicles, is a significant development of smart grids. This development has effectively transformed the traditional grid system, promising numerous advantages for economic values and autonomous energy source control. In smart grids development, metaheuristic algorithms are one of the optimization algorithms that have been applied extensively to mitigate the accompanying problems such as voltage instability, power loss, and high installation cost. This paper presents a comprehensive review of metaheuristic techniques for the optimal integration of electrical units in distribution networks, considering different phases of the optimization process. These include the approaches for handling of crucial objective functions and the optimal integration methods for different electrical units. This review shows a need for more research on developing efficient metaheuristic algorithms and the effective handling of multiple objective functions.