Optimal Capacitor Placement and Sizing in Radial Distribution Feeders using evolutionary Algorithm: a case study of the Algerian-Djanet distribution system

The optimal capacitor placement and sizing in radial distribution systems is considered as a nonlinear integer optimization problem, with locations and ratings of shunt capacitors being discrete values. The aims is to minimize the total real power loss and the overall cost of that of shunt capacitors while satisfying operating and power quality constraints. This paper investigates the implementation of an evolutionary algorithm based for solving the capacitor placement and sizing optimization problem with reduced annual operating cost. The proposed method has been practically applied to the IEEE 34 nodes and the Algerian-Djanet distribution system, and the computational results obtained showed that the proposed approach is capable of producing a high-quality solution. The results are compared with previous studies using recent heuristic methods.