USING POWER LOSS SENSITIVITY FACTORS AND NON-LINEAR PROGRAMMING TO OPTIMIZE DG PLACEMENT IN POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to optimally determining the location and
capacity of distributed generation (DG) in power distribution grids, aiming at power
loss minimization. This proposed approach consists of two stages. First, the DG site
is determined based on the power loss sensitivity factor. Then, the non-linear
programming (NLP) model is adopted to calculate the DG optimal capacity.
Constraints considered in the NLP-based formulation comprise the system of power
flow equations, voltage magnitude limits, DG’s generating output bounds, and line
branches’ thermal limits. The NLP model was solved by deploying
MATPOWER/MATLAB software. The evaluation of the developed method is
implemented using an IEEE distribution grid of 33 nodes. The calculation results
show that the optimization of DG’s location and size significantly contribute to
power loss and the voltage quality enhancement of the distribution system.