Optimal allocation of capacitor banks and distributed generations to maximize conservation voltage reduction under diverse scenarios

Conservation voltage reduction (CVR) is used by utilities to reduce energy consumption and losses. However, accurate positioning and sizing of capacitor banks (CBs) and distributed generation units (DGs) are necessary to enhance CVR capabilities. This article presents a two-stage approach to improve CVR capabilities. The first stage uses a crayfish optimization algorithm (COA) to find the best siting and sizing of CBs and DGs. The second stage applies an analytical method to determine on-load tap changer tap settings. The plausibility of the CVR approach is validated for voltage reduction, energy savings and emissions reduction on the IEEE-69 node system across different modes. Different load scenarios are evaluated for their impact on the CVR scheme. Simulation results demonstrate notable voltage reduction of up to 3.27%, energy savings of up to 11.50% and emissions reduction of 12.63%. The COA method surpasses existing algorithms and produces better results with a higher convergence rate.