Optimal Network Reconfiguration for Real Power Losses Reduction in the IEEE 33-Bus Radial Distribution System

This article reports on the development and evaluation of a proposed optimal network reconfiguration approach for total real power losses reduction in radial distribution systems. The proposed approach was developed in MATLAB and the IEEE 33-bus radial distribution system was used in evaluating its performance. Application of the developed approach on the IEEE 33-bus radial distribution system helped to reduce the total real power losses of the system by 76.31%, from 202.68 kW to 48.02 kW, whereas the best approaches reported in literature reduced the losses by 31.15%, from 202.68 kW to 139.55 kW. These results suggest that the approaches reported in literature fail to find the global optimum combination of tie and sectionalizing branches whose corresponding switches have to be closed and opened, respectively, in order to minimize the total real power losses in the system. Consequently, due to its significant reduction of the system's total real power losses, the developed approach proves to be a potentially reliable tool for power system operators to adopt and use when solving the radial tribution systems' optimal network reconfiguration problem for real power losses reduction.