Optimal Placement and Sizing of DG in Radial Distribution Networks Using SFLA

Optimal placement and sizing of DG in distribution network is an optimization problem with continuous and discrete variables. Many researchers have used evolutionary methods for finding the optimal DG placement. This paper proposes a shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) for optimal placement and sizing of distributed generation (DG) in radial distribution system to minimize the total real power loss and to improve the voltage profile. The SFLA is a meta-heuristic search method inspired from the memetic evolution of a group of frogs when seeking for food. It consists of a frog leaping rule for local search and a memetic shuffling rule for global information exchange. The proposed SFL algorithm is used to determine optimal sizes and locations of multi-DGs. Test results indicate that SFLA method can obtain better results than the simple heuristic search method on the 33-bus radial distribution systems. Moreover, voltage profile improvement and branch current reduction are obtained.