Techno-Economic Planning and Enhancing Resilience in Rural Distribution System with Elephant Herd Optimization

This study presents a comprehensive techno-economic planning of a rural distribution system utilizing Elephant Herd Optimization (EHO). The study considers the IEEE-33 bus distribution system with grid outages replicating the conditions prevalent in remote regions. The multi-objective formulated problem is solved using the EHO technique in MATLAB to achieve the optimal sizing and placement for distributed energy resources (DERs). The planning objective aims to minimize the net present cost (NPC), energy not supplied (ENS), loss of load expectation (LOLE), and line losses. The results show that line losses are reduced by 56.2%, whereas ENS and LOLE are reduced by 99.64% and 99.56%, respectively. Moreover, the minimum voltage magnitude has been improved from 0.88 p.u. to 0.95 p.u. The insights gained from this study can help decision-makers make informed decisions on deploying energy infrastructure in remote regions while considering economic and technical aspects of power distribution system planning.