ABC algorithm based optimal sizing and placement of DGs in distribution networks considering multiple objectives

In recent years, due to increase in load demand, distribution networks have got substantial attention to get optimized. It is significant to optimally place the distributed generators (DGs) in distribution networks to minimize power losses and voltage drops. However, the DGs incur certain investment and operational costs, and their placement is only viable if these costs overcome energy losses. Therefore, current paper investigates the optimal sizing and placement of DGs in distribution networks with a novel concept to simultaneously minimize total energy cost along with total power loss and average voltage drop. Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is proposed to solve the considered multi-objective problem. The performance of the proposed ABC algorithm is tested with standard algorithms. Newton Raphson load flow (NRLF) analysis is conducted on IEEE 33 and 69-bus radial networks and on CIGRE medium voltage (MV) benchmark grid. Two test cases have been formed and investigated. The results prove that proposed ABC algorithm mostly outperforms other algorithms. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).