Capacitors placement by NSGA-II in distribution systems with non-linear loads

• Determines the number, placement, control and size of the capacitor banks.
• Compensate primary distribution circuits contaminated by harmonics.
• Power quality constraints and of overstress of the capacitors are used.
• NSGA-II multi-objective optimization algorithm is employed.

The research in methodologies for capacitor placement in primary distribution circuits is a recurrent topic in the specialized bibliography. Most of the presented formulations consider the minimization of the energy losses and the peak power losses of the circuit as well as the cost of the capacitors. However have been considered some additional objectives like: minimum deviation of voltage. Only few of the methods presented are able to determine the frontier of Pareto of the multi-objective optimization problem, while the rest of the contributions use just a single function objective that includes all the objectives by means of factors of weight. Besides, most of the contributions are applied to circuits balanced with linear load. In the present work develops a method to determine the number, placement, control and size of the fixed and switched capacitor banks in primary distribution circuits contaminated by harmonics. The necessary power quality constraints and of overstress of the capacitors are used. The developed program is based on the multi-objective optimization algorithm NSGA-II. The effectiveness of the proposed procedure is tested by solving a practical example.