Optimization applications to power distribution

An electric utility's power distribution system can account for up to 60 percent of capital budget and 20 percent of operating costs, making it a significant expense. Minimizing the cost of the distribution system can be a considerable challenge, as the feeder system associated with only a single substation may present a distribution designer with thousands of feasible design options from which to choose. Finding the overall least-cost plan for the distribution system associated with several neighboring substations can be a truly daunting task. For these reasons, the use of computer-aided tools that help identify the lowest cost distribution configuration has been a focus of much R&D work in the last 3 decades, producing a number of computerized optimization programs that can be viewed from the user's standpoint as tools to help find the best design from among those many possibilities.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>