Algorithms and methodology for development of OCP-PSO tool for optimal capacitor placement to enhance system reliability

Utility aims capacitor placement for power factor improvement, capacity release, voltage profile and reduction of power losses. Today, reliability is an important parameter in electrical industry to achieve high security and adequacy of the system. There are three important parameters required to be introduced in reliability viz customer composite damage function, average load and failure rate. If failure rate is reduced by means of optimal capacitor placement then reliability cost is also reduced. In this Paper, Objective function is developed and used in evaluation considering the capacitor cost, benefits due to reduction in power loss and reliability cost which is a function of failure rate. Failure rate and it's modification due to number of capacitor placements are critical issues addressed in this paper. This paper also introduces the modification method for failure rate using thermal loading and life expectancy of electrical equipments such as transformer. PSO is used to find the optimal locations and capacitor sizing with the help of dot net framework. Before applying PSO tool, IEEE 30 bus system is evaluated for load flow study. Load flow data is processed through OCP module developed in novel software. OCP module has two treatments. In first treatment, data is processed for evaluation of various objectives without capacitor placement and in second treatment, PSO is allowed to find the optimal place and size of capacitor considering the constraints selected. This paper discusses on methodology implemented in the novel software OCP-PSO. Algorithms are discussed in each process.