A Gravitational Search Algorithm-based Optimization Approach Applied to Capacitor Placement in Distribution System

2 Professor, Electrical Engineering, (India) ABSTRACT The power distributed into the network has losses, which is greater in distribution system compared to transmission system. Capacitors have been employed to provide reactive power compensation in distribution systems to resolve this problem. These are used to reduce power losses and to maintain the voltage profile within acceptable limits. The benefit of compensation depends greatly on how the capacitors are placed in the system, specifically on the location and size of the added or placed capacitors. So for this adopts two methods where the first method being the sensitivity analysis and the second method is the Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA). Sensitivity analysis is a methodical technique, which is used to reduce the search space and to arrive at an accurate solution for recognizing the locality of capacitors. Capacitor values are allocated for the respective locations using GSA. The performance of the proposed method is scrutinized on distribution systems. It is applied to IEEE-33 and it is found that power losses in distribution system have been minimized. Due to which a significant amount of annual savings maximized. The techniques has been implemented in MATLAB R2014b environment.