An Extensive Literature Review and New Proposal on Optimal Capacitor Placement in Distribution Systems

The main goal of power utilities is to supply reliable and quality power to the end-users and fulfill their total demands at all possible locations. Most of the loads are connected in the distribution systems are inductive. The excessive reactive power demand over the distribution network causes tremendous reactive power losses and changes the voltage profile, hence the system's reliability. Shunt Capacitor Bank (SCB) is widely used in the distribution system for reactive power support, voltage profile, and system performance improvement. But there are some challenges to employ SCB in the distribution network; among them, ensuring the most optimum location and size is a big challenge to get the maximum benefits. Some existing techniques showed better loss reduction but needed either larger SCBs sizes or cause improper node voltage. In this research study, the first section provides an extensive literature review of optimal SCBs placement and sizing. Later on, a new technique called Combinatorial Method has been developed for sizing and sitting of optimal Shunt Capacitors to reduce the distribution loss significantly. The developed method was tested for different case studies using Indian practical 22-bus and IEEE-69-bus network. The results were compared with DSA, Fuzzy GA, and TLBO method and found better distribution feeder loss minimization and voltage profile improvement.