Impact of distributed generators in the power loss and voltage profile of three phase unbalanced distribution network

• Particle swarm optimization method is used for allocation of DGs.
• An unbalanced IEEE 123 distribution network is used.
• OpenDSS is used in a co-simulation environment with MATLAB.
• Proposed method reduces the computation times significantly.
• This method can also be used for the allocation of D-STATCOM and battery Storage.

In this paper, using particle swarm optimization (PSO) based method is developed to determine the optimal allocation of distributed generators (DGS) on a multi phased unbalanced distribution network. PSO algorithm has been programmed in MATLAB using open source software called OpenDSS in a co-simulation environment to solve the unbalanced three-phase optimal power flow (TOPF) and to find the optimal location and sizing of different types of distributed generators. Using the IEEE 123 node distribution feeder as a test bed, results from the proposed method is compared to those from the repeated load flow (RLF) method. For a realistic study, mixes of all type of DGs are considered. Results indicate that integrating optimally sized DGs at the optimal locations not only reduces the total power loss in the distributed system but improves the voltage profile as well.