Mohammad Mozaffari Legha - Departments of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran
Mahdi Mozaffari Legha - Departments of Power Engineering, Shoushtar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran

Distributed Generation (DG) can help in reducing the cost of electricity to the costumer, relieve network congestion and provide environmentally friendly energy close to load centers. Its capacity is also scalable and it provides voltage support at distribution level. Hence, DG placement and penetration level is an important problem for both the utility and DG owner. The optimal power flow (OPF) has been widely used for both the operation and planning of a power system. The OPF is also suited for deregulated environment. Four different objective functions are considered in this study: (1) Improvement voltage profile (2) minimization of active power loss (3) maximum capacity of conductors (4) maximization of reliability level. The site and size of DG units are assumed as design variables. The results are discussed and compared with those of traditional distribution planning and also with Imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA).

Distributed generation, distribution network planning, multi-objective optimization, and Imperialist competitive algorithm