Optimal Shunt Capacitors’ Placement and Sizing in Radial Distribution Systems Using Multiverse Optimizer

This article presents a new approach for solving the radial distribution systems optimal shunt capacitors' placement and sizing problem. The approach modifies and partially uses the conventional loss sensitivity factors (LSFs) and MATLAB's ismember and any commands to reduce the search space of optimal buses that require shunt capacitor placement. Afterward, the multiverse optimizer (MVO) is used to do a concurrent search of the most optimal buses and the corresponding capacitor sizes. To evaluate the effectiveness of the developed approach, simulations have been carried out on the 10-, 33-, and 69-bus radial distribution systems. For all the test systems, the simulation results show that the developed approach gives results as good as those obtained when a search for the most optimal buses is carried out in unreduced search spaces, hence making the approach effective in reducing the computation time and maintaining the much-needed accuracy. Finally, the performance of the MVO has been compared against the other 11 different optimization algorithms, and in all instances, its performance has been outstanding.