Optimal switching device placement in radial distribution systems

This paper presents a new formulation for power system sectionalizing device placement taking into consideration outage, maintenance and investments costs. The formulation of sectionalizing switches is a combinatorial constrained optimization problem with a nonlinear, nondifferentiable objective function. A solution methodology based on the optimization technique of simulated annealing, is proposed to determine: (i) the number of sectionalizing switches; and (ii) the locations of the switches. The proposed solution methodology can offer a global optimal solution for the sectionalizing device placement problem which includes the reliability, investment and maintenance costs.