A contribution to load flow in radial distribution system and comparison of different load flow methods

This paper presents a new development for load flow analysis in radial distribution systems. The aim of this paper is to reduce data preparation to solve load flow in distribution system. The proposed method uses simple equations and requires less computation time and number of iterations. The load flow algorithm used in this paper is based on forward and backward sweep method. The method is efficient and easy to implement. This method does not require formation of BIBC, BCBV [10, 16, and 17] matrices and separate identification of up/down stream nodes and branches at any stage of load flow calculations [5, 8, and 15]. The proposed load flow (LF) analysis has been obtained in two ways, one is on current basis and another is on power basis. The main aim of this paper is to compare different load flow methods that are used for distribution systems under different loadings, X/R ratios, static load models and load growth scenarios. The convergence ability of these methods is evaluated under these conditions. All these load flow methods are evaluated on IEEE 15 bus and IEEE 30 bus radial distribution test system and comparison of voltage profile, total real and reactive power losses, number of iterations and cpu time is provided. The proposed method is compared with six existing load flow methods proposed by Das et al. [5], Ghosh et al. [8], Aravindhbabu et al. [10], K. Nagaraju et al. [15], K.V.S.R. Murthy et.al. [16], and J.H. Teng [17] to demonstrate its effectiveness.