Analysis of optimal conductor selection for radial distribution systems using DPSO

This paper describes a discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO) based solution procedure for selection of conductor in radial distribution system (RDS) so as to minimize the cost of energy benefit. The objective function is formulated to select optimal size of conductor for each feeder segment so as to minimize the sum of depreciation on capital investment and cost of energy loss subjected to the feeder voltage and maximum current carrying capacity and then proposed algorithm is employed to achieve the objective. The performance of the proposed approach is illustrated on 26 and 33 node RDS. The results have obtained by the proposed technique are compared with the other techniques listed in the literature. The results demonstrate that the DPSO algorithm is feasible and efficient for solving optimal selection of conductor problem.