Dr.Tilak Thakur, Mr. Lalit Sharma / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 Vol.

1, Issue 2, pp.078-085 www.ijera.com

Optimal Capacitor Sizing for Power Loss Minimization in Distribution Networks

1 1 2

Tilak Thakur Member IEEE, and 2Lalit Sharma

Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering (Punjab Engineering College) Chandigarh, INDIA

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical &Electronics Engineering (I.E.T Bhaddal) Ropar, Punjab, INDIA the planner and to ensure that the limited capital resources are used to achieve the greatest possible incremental reliability and improvement in the system. Some of the reliability improvement strategies are as follows [2]; adding devices for protection, reclosing and switching , automation, faster crew response to speed up the repair process, fewer equipment failures to prevent contingencies and system reconfiguration. Shunt capacitor placement in power systems, particularly in the distribution part, is one of the most used schemes for reinforcement. The modern power distribution network is constantly being faced with an evergrowing load demand hence resulting into increased burden and reduced voltage. The distribution network also has a typical feature that the voltages at buses (nodes) reduces if moved away from substation. This decrease in voltage is mainly due to insufficient amount of reactive power .Even in certain industrial areas under critical loading, it may lead to voltage collapse. Thus to improve the voltage profile and to avoid voltage collapse reactive compensation is required. When fault comes on the distribution system then it may leads to several problems such as Increase in reactive component of circuit current. Decrease in voltage level at load. Increase in power losses in the system. Increase in demand charges for consumers. Increase in system investment per KW of load supply.

Abstract- Power sectors are currently facing power shortage due to high distribution losses and the efforts are concentrated on increasing generation capabilities resulting in increased capital cost. But power savings are also possible by improving operating strategy for distribution system such as distribution reconfiguration, capacitor placement and Facts devices etc. In this paper capacitor placement is studied to reduce power loss in distribution system using Tabu Search technique with MATLAB Software. The capacitor placement problem aims to determine the locations and sizes of capacitors to be installed in a radial distribution system. The objective of the paper is aimed to reduce the power losses in the system and retain the voltage magnitudes of the system within prescribed maximum and minimum allowable values while minimizing the total cost of the system. Keywords- Capacitor sizing, distribution system, power loss reduction, voltage profile, Tabu Search, parallel algorithm, power flow calculations.

I. INTRODUCTION

The main function of a power system is to feed loads with electrical energy as economically as possible and with a reasonable level of reliability and quality. Therefore, Distribution networks are mostly configured as radial for proper protection coordination. Distribution system is one of the main three parts of a power system, responsible for transferring electrical energy to the end users. A distribution system is relatively cheap and outages in this part of the system have a very localized effect compared with generation and transmission parts. However, analysis of the customer failure statistics of most utilities indicates that the distribution system makes the greatest individual contribution to the unavailability of supply to a customer [1].Therefore these statistics reinforce the need to be concerned with the reliability of the distribution system, to evaluate quantitatively the merits of various reinforcement schemes available to

Many researchers have worked on these issues but still there is need to improve the existing

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Dr.Tilak Thakur, Mr. Lalit Sharma / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp.078-085 www.ijera.com
methodologies for the betterment of the power distribution. Capacitor placement in distribution system has several benefits such as reducing lagging component of the circuit current, improving voltage regulation, reducing active and reactive power loss because of reduction in current, increasing power factor of the system. Based on the model, the optimal size, locations and switching intervals of fixed and switched capacitors are determined. Depending upon the power distribution feeder models loss minimization techniques, some studies are reported as follows: (i) Capacitor Placement for Asymmetrical and multi-grounded Feeders: This new model for radial distribution systems considers asymmetrical and multi-grounded feeders and supply unbalanced loads. The objective is to maximize the net revenue savings resulting from power and energy reductions [3].Capacitor sizes are treated as continuous variables which is not the case in real life where capacitor sizes are discrete. A numerical example is presented for a real multi-grounded, three phase feeder with lateral branches and five wire sizes. However, did not discuss optimal number of fixed and /or switched capacitors to achieve the maximum savings. (ii) Capacitor Placement With load Uncertainty with Max-Min Voltage Limits: In this technique, an objective function representing monetary savings that results from capacitor allocation in terms of system voltage and angles and the reactive power are allocated .The constraints are the maximum and minimum system voltages. The method takes the load uncertainty into account. This is done to prevent both over-compensation and the under-compensation. To reduce system variables and to avoid the numerical instability, sensitivity analysis andpattern recognition techniques are used. The proposed solution is based on non-linear programming technique where two models are presented. The first one solves the problem subject to approximate constraints. The output of this model is used as a starting solution to the second model.The second model has the exact formulation of the constraints using the method of approximate programming (MAP) [4]. (iii) Season Based Capacitor Allocation: In this technique, a method to optimally allocate capacitors along a distribution line using the data gathered by reactive current recorders installed at major feeder taps .This data is adjusted by a computer program for seasonal variation to represent an average week. The data is used later to achieve maximum savings by placing the proper sizes of capacitors at the appropriate places [5]. The method assumes that the current readings recorded at a node are applicable to the entire section which follows the node. It places the capacitors in different types and sizes in a systematic trial and error procedure. This method can be improved if a better way to account for seasonal changes is found. Currently, this is done by adjusting the data for the average week. It can also be improved if the program is extended to handle split feeders or nodes placed on significant branches. Others have formulated the problem as a non linear programming model and considered both location and capacitor sizes as continuous variables and used heuristic approach such as the genetic algorithm (GA) to select capacitors for radial distribution systems [6]-[9] . II. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION FORMULATION. AND

The capacitor placement problem aims to determine the locations and sizes of capacitors to be installed in a radial distribution system. The objective is aimed to reduce the power losses in the system and retain the voltage magnitudes of the system within prescribed maximum and minimum allowable values for different load levels while minimizing the total cost of the system. Min F = min (Cost) The objective function of the problem includes the cost of power loss and capacitor placement:

= +
=1
=

Cost = Objective function which is to be minimize. Kp = Annual Cost per Unit of Power Loss. PTloss =Total power loss . 0 = Capacitor size in Kvar.

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Dr.Tilak Thakur, Mr. Lalit Sharma / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp.078-085 www.ijera.com
L = annual cost per Kvar = an integer variable. except no 1. The real and Reactive power losses in branch 1 are :-

The voltage magnitude at each bus must be maintained within its limits expressed as follows Vmin |Vi| Vmax Where |Vi| is voltage magnitude of bus i, Vmin and Vmax are bus minimum and maximum voltage limits, respectively. A set of simplified feeder line flow formulations to avoid the complex iteration process for power flow analysis is applied. Consider a distribution system consisting of a radial main feeder only. The single line diagram comprising n nodes and n-1 branches is shown in fig 1. Where, Pi+1: Total active or real power load fed through node i+1. Qi+1: Total reactive power load fed through node i+1. Vi+1: voltage magnitude of node i+1. R(j) : resistance values of the feeder at jth branch. X(j) : reactance values of the feeder at jth branch. NB : Total number of nodes. (j) : B ranch number,j=1,2.NB-1. PL (i): real power load of the ith node. QL(i) : reactive power load of the i th node. LP (j): real power loss of branch j. LQ (j): reactive power loss of branch j. For the last node

I 1 =

1 1 | 2 | 2 1 + 1

(1)

2 2 = 2 1 .(2)
From equations (1) and (2) we have

Power Loss Equation The total power loss of the feeder, Ploss may then be determined by summing up the losses of all line sections of the feeder which is given by The above equation is a recursive relation of voltage magnitude. Since the substation voltage magnitude |V(1)| is known it is possible to find out the voltage magnitudes of all other nodes. The total real and reactive power load fed through node 2 are given by

III.

PROPOSED TECHNIQUE(TABU SEARCH) This section describes the Tabu Search (TS). TS is one of the meta-heuristic methods for solving a combinatorial optimization problem. The basic mechanism of TS introduces an adaptive memory called Tabu list into the neighborhood search on the hill climbing method (HCM). HCM iteratively carries out local search in a neighborhood round the solution. However, HCM easily gets stuck in a local minimum. On the other hand, TS continues search process to escape from a local minimum due to the function of the adaptive memory. That called Tabu list plays an important role in Tabu search. It prevents the search

From the above equation, it is clear that total load fed through node 2 is the load of node 2 itself plus the load of all other nodes plus the losses of all branches

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Dr.Tilak Thakur, Mr. Lalit Sharma / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp.078-085 www.ijera.com
process from short term circulation by means of storing some attributes and making it unchangeable for a while. Attributes in the Tabu list is updated by each iteration. Once a new attribute enters into the Tabu list and becomes a fixed attribute, the oldest one is released from it and becomes a free attribute. The period of holding one attribute is refers to as the Tabu length that is a parameter to tune up. On the other hand TS continues the process and finds out the better solutions. TS has a basic strategy called aspiration level. That makes fixed attribute changeable if the cost function is improved. TS using the aspiration level find out better solutions. IV. SOLUTION ALGORITHM STEP 1 Read the bus data and line data. STEP 2 Solve feeder line flow for the system compute its fitness and determine the initial annual cost, power loss and bus voltage. STEP 3 Randomly select the bus where you want to connect the capacitor for the population size Np. STEP 4 Set the iteration k= 0. STEP 5 Update the iteration k = k +1. STEP 6 Decompose a neighborhood around the solution into the sub neighborhoods Nsub. STEP 7 Run feeder line flow program for each candidate and calculate its fitness value. STEP 8 Move the solution to the best one with the minimum cost function in all the solution candidates from each sub neighborhoods while satisfying the voltage constraints. STEP 9 Go to step 11 if the convergence criterion is satisfied otherwise go to step 10. STEP 10 Update the tabu list and return to step 4. STEP 11 Evaluate the best solution to that is selected by searching in all the tabu list. STEP 12 Find out the capacitor value and the bus number for the best solution selected from the tabu Figure 1: Flowchart of the proposed method VI. The Application Example The proposed method has been programmed using MATLAB and run on a Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz personal computer. The application example is a 23 KV, 9 sections of the feeder. Figure 2 shows the 9 sections of the feeder. Load and impedance data for the feeder are given in Table 5 and Table 6 respectively. The equivalent annual cost per unit of power loss, Kp is list at which annual cost and the power loss is minimum. V. FLOWCHART TECHNIQUE OF PROPOSED

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Dr.Tilak Thakur, Mr. Lalit Sharma / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp.078-085 www.ijera.com
selected to be 168/(Kw-year), and the limits on the bus voltages are Vmin = 0.90p.u. Vmax = 1.10 p.u. Table2: Annual cost and total power loss in case 2 Items Uncompensated Compensated Total loss(Kw) 783.752 703.121 Annual cost($) 131,670 119,429 Net savings($) 12,241 CompQ5 3900 ensation Q6 1650 Q9 1050 Max|Vi|p.u 1.0000 1.0015 Min|Vi|p.u 0.8375 0.9001 The cost function is optimized at the 12th iterations and after that the cost becomes constant. So, this represents the optimal best solution achieved for the second case in which the technique will select those buses where we want to locate a capacitors. Case 3: In this technique randomly select the busses automatically using Tabu Search. In this case the optimization technique itself selects all the buses except bus no 1 coz that bus is the slack (reference bus) but keeping in mind the voltage constraints from 1.0p.upto0.90p.u Table 3: Voltage profile and capacitors added Bus No Uncompe nsated Voltage (p.u) Taboo search Voltage (p.u)
Capa citor

Figure 2. 23 KV 9 Section Feeder Available capacitor sizes with their corresponding annual costs are listed in Table7. Table 8 shows the 27 possible capacitors sizes. Three cases are investigated. Case1: Automatically select the buses where voltage profile violated. It shows that the capacitors are added to bus number 8, 9, 10 because the voltage profile gets violated at these 3 locations so the technique automatically selects these locations and places the capacitor. The total power loss comes to be 779.090 KW, annual cost is 131527.57($) and voltage deviation is 0.028023. Table1: Annual cost and total power loss in case 1. Items Uncompensated Compensated Total loss(Kw) 783.752 779.093 Annual cost($) 131,670 131,527 Net savings($) 143 CompQ8 2400 ensation Q9 450 Q10 750 Max|Vi|p.u 1.0000 1.0000 Min|Vi|p.u 0.8375 0.9001 The cost function is optimized at the 21st iterations and after that the cost becomes constant .So, this represents the optimal best solution achieved for the first case in which the technique chooses that buses where the voltage profile is violated. Case2: Manually Select the busses (Except bus no. 1) here the buses are selected manually, the buses 5, 6, 9 are selected and the total power losses, annual cost and the voltage deviation comes to be 703.121(KW), annual cost is 1, 19,429 ($) and voltage deviation is 0.023075.

Reasoning Compensated Volta Qc Kvar ge (p.u)

0 1.0000 1 1.000000 1.00000 1.00157 1200 0.9971 4050 2 0.992901 4050 0.9978 4050 3 0.987378 1.00735 0.99730 1050 0.9866 2550 4 0.963409 0.98802 3000 0.9766 2100 5 0.948017 0.96433 450 0.9577 750 6 0.917171 0.95677 150 0.9502 300 7 0.907169 0.94209 300 0.9358 150 8 0.888957 0.91794 450 0.9143 300 9 0.858695 0.90010 300 0.9028 150 10 0.837504 In this case the proposed technique randomly selects the buses so as to achieve the best solution i.e. to minimize the power loss, annual cost, and to improve the voltage profile. The total power losses obtained in this case are 677.875 and the annual cost is 115911.764($) keeping the voltage between the permissible limits maximum voltage is 1.0 p.u and minimum voltage is 0.9 p.u. The optimal best solution is achieved at the 80th iteration. The graph

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Dr.Tilak Thakur, Mr. Lalit Sharma / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp.078-085 www.ijera.com
between annual cost verses iterations shows that the optimal best solution is obtained after the 80th iterations and thus proposed technique is beneficial to achieve the best optimal solution. The technique was compared with others; it was found that the cost function optimization has resulted better in terms of total power loss and annual cost with different techniques as listed bellow in Table 4. Table4: Comparison of total power loss and annual cost with different techniques
Items Total losses (Kw) Annual Cost($) Net savings ($) Max|Vi| p.u Min|Vi| p.u UncomPensated FuzzyReasoning Only Sensitivi ty Tabu search

This graph shows the total power losses by the various techniques .Before compensation the total power losses are 783.752 KW .The total power losses with fuzzy reasoning are 704.882 KW. With the sensitivity method the total power losses are 682.969 KW and the last proposed technique i.e. tabu search the total power losses obtained are minimum i.e. 677.875 KW. So by comparing all the techniques the graph shows the minimum power losses are obtained by the proposed method. (II) Comparison of total annual cost with different techniques. Figure 4 shows the annual cost by the various techniques .Before compensation the annual cost are 1,31,670($) .The annual cost with fuzzy reasoning are 1,19,420($). With the sensitivity method the annual cost is 1,17,595($) and the last proposed technique i.e. tabu search the annual cost is 1, 15,911($) obtained are minimum. So by comparing all the techniques the graph shows the minimum annual cost is obtained by the proposed method.

783.752 131,670 1.0000 0.8375

704.882 119,420 12,250 1.000 0.905

682.969 117,595 14,075 1.0012 0.9010

677.875 115,911 15,759 1.0015 0.9001

Annual Cost($)
131,670 135,000 130,000 125,000 120,000 119,420 117,595 115,911 Annual Cost($)

(I) Comparison of total power loss with different techniques.

Total losses(Kw)
783.752 800 700 600 704.882 682.969 677.875

115,000 110,000

Total losses(Kw)

105,000

Figure 3.Comparison of total power loss with different techniques.

Figure 4.Comparison of total annual cost with different techniques.

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(III) Comparison of Net savings with different techniques. method. However, the computational time of the former is much less than that of the latter. As a result, it has been clarified that the proposed method provides higher accurate solutions with less computational effort and gives much more savings as compared to other methods.
VIII. REFERENCES

Net savings($)
20000 14,075 15000 10000 5000 0 0 12,250 15,759

Net savings($)

Figure 5. Comparison of total annual cost with Different techniques This graph shows the net savings by the various techniques .Before compensation the net savings are zero. The net savings with fuzzy reasoning are 12,250($).With the sensitivity method the net savings are 14,075($).The last proposed technique i.e. Tabu Search the net savings obtained are maximum. So by comparing all the techniques the graph shows the maximum savings are obtained by the proposed method. VII. CONCLUSIONS This paper has proposed a tabu search (TS) based method for optimal capacitor sizing for distribution system. A capacitor placement method that employs Tabu Search as well as simplified power flow formulations to reduce power losses and enhance voltage profile for radial distribution system is presented. The method seeks the most effective buses to install compensation capacitors so that a maximum annual cost saving is attained. For the application example, it is observed that the computational results obtained by the proposed method are exactly the same as that obtained using an exhaustive search

[1] BILLINTON R., ALLAN R.N.: Reliability evaluation of power systems (Plenum, New York, 1996, 2nd edn.) [2] BROWN R.E.: Electric power distribution relaibility (Marcel Dekker Inc., New York, Basel, 2002) [3] A.A.El-Kib, Placement of fixed and /or nonsimultaneously switched capacitors on unbalanced three-phase feeders involving laterals, IEEE Transactions on PAS, Vol.PAS104, No.11, Sept.1985, pp.3298-3305. [4] Saut Ertem, Optimal shunt capacitor allocation by nonlinear programming, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol .PWRD-2, No.4, Oct.1987, pp.1310-1316. [5] R.E.Rinker, Using the reactive current profile of feeder to determine optimal capacitor placement, IEEE Transaction on PWRD, Vol.3, No.1, Jan.1988, pp.411-416. [6] J.J.Grainger and S.H.Lee, Optimum size and location of shunt capacitors for reduction of losses on distribution feeders,IEEE Trans.on Power Apparatus and Systems,vol.100,pp.11051118,Mar1981. [7] S.H.Lee and J.J.Grainger, Optimum placement of fixed and switched capacitors on primary distribution feeders, IEEE Trans.on Power Apparatus and Systems, vol.100, pp.345-352, Jan.1981. [8] J.J.Grainger and S.H.Lee, Capacity release by shunt capacitor placement on distribution feeders: A new voltage-dependent model, IEEE Trans.on Power Apparatus and Systems,vol 101,pp.1236-1244,May 1982. [9] S.Sundhararajan and A.Pahwa, Optimal selection of capacitors for radial distribution systems using a genetic algorithm, IEEE Trans.on Power Systems, vol.9, pp.1499-1507, Aug.1994.

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J APPENDIX Bus no 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Total 1840 980 1790 1598 1610 780 1150 980 1640 12368 460 340 446 1840 600 110 60 130 200 4186 PL(KW) QL(Kvar) Qjc J Qjc J Qjc J Qjc 1 150 8 1200 15 2250 22 3300 2 300 9 1350 16 2400 23 3450 3 450 10 1500 17 2550 24 3600 4 600 11 1650 18 2700 25 3750 5 750 12 1800 19 2850 26 3900 6 900 13 1950 20 3000 27 4050 7 1050 14 2100 21 3150 -

Table 8. Possible choices of capacitor size (Kvar)

Table 5 Three phase load data.

From bus 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

To bus 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

R(ohms) 0.1233 0.0140 0.7643 0.6984 1.9831 0.9053 2.0552 4.7953 5.3434

X(ohms) 0.4127 0.6051 1.2050 0.6084 1.7276 0.7886 1.1640 2.7160 3.0264

Table 6 Feeder impedance data.

Size (Kvar) 150 300 450 600 900 1200 Cost 75 97.5 114 132 165 204 ($/Kvar) Table 7 Three phase capacitor sizes and annual cost

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