A novel and practical approach to distribution system performance enhancement using a fuzzy capacitor allocation method

Abstract

As the electrical utility business enters into a deregulated environment, distribution companies will strive to operate at the utmost economic efficiency. Loss reduction through the use of capacitor placement is an effective means of decreasing the operating costs of a utility. This thesis details a practical and flexible approach for distribution system loss reduction and performance enhancement using a fuzzy capacitor allocation technique. The proposed method takes advantage of the concepts of fuzzy set theory to model uncertain parameters of the distribution system, and to represent knowledge and heuristics that can be used to optimize the operation of the distribution system. A fuzzy expert system is used to determine suitable locations for capacitor installations and a multi-objective fuzzy optimization approach is used to determine the proper sizes of the capacitors. Effective control of capacitors is performed by another fuzzy expert system. Computer simulations performed, have clearly demonstrated the advantages and the significant contributions of the methods in this thesis for distribution system loss reduction and performance enhancement.