Feeder Reconfiguration in Unbalanced Distribution System with Wind and Solar Generation using Ant Lion Optimization

This paper proposes an approach for the distribution system (DS) feeder reconfiguration (FRC) of balanced and unbalanced networks by minimizing the total cost of operation. Network reconfiguration is a feasible technique for system performance enhancement in low voltage distribution systems. In this work, wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) units are selected as distributed energy resources (DERs) and they are considered in the proposed FRC approach. The uncertainties related to DERs are modeled using probability analysis. In most cases, the distribution system is an unbalanced system and the 3-phase transformers play a vital role as they have different configurations. This paper proposes efficient power flow models for the unbalanced distribution systems with various 3-phase transformer configurations. The proposed FRC approach has been solved by using the evolutionary algorithm based Ant Lion Optimization (ALO), and it has been implemented on 17 bus test system considering the balanced and unbalanced distribution systems with and without RESs.