Integrated database approach in multi‐objective network reconfiguration for distribution system using discrete optimisation techniques

Reconfiguring the link between buses is a crucial task to enhance the distribution system performance. Reconfiguration is a complex combinatorial process due to numerous feasible solutions. Therefore, to consistently find global optimum solutions within a short span of time is a challenging task. One of the factors that cause time consumption in finding optimal network configurations is the elimination of non‐radiality network solutions during the optimisation process. To address this issue, this work proposes to store pre‐determined network radiality solutions in a database. These sets of solutions are used in the network reconfiguration optimisation by a discrete evolutionary programming and a discrete evolutionary particle swarm optimisation techniques. These optimisation methods are based on a multi‐objective problem which minimises power loss, voltage deviation, and a number of switching actions. Moreover, the quality of the solutions is measured in terms of computational time and consistency. To demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed technique, a comparative assessment is carried out on 33‐bus and 118‐bus distribution systems. It is found that the proposed technique outperforms other existing methods in terms of quality of the solutions.