Optimal distributed generation placement in distribution system to improve reliability and critical loads pick up after natural disasters

The increase in frequency of natural disasters has necessitated the need of resilient distribution systems. Natural disasters lead to severe damage of power system infrastructure and the main grid may not be available to serve the loads. The integration of distributed generation (DG) into distribution system partially restores the loads after natural disasters and improves the reliability during normal operating conditions. After a natural disaster, objective of the system operators is to restore the critical loads as a priority. This enables the need of considering critical load pick up as an objective function while placing the DGs. A location based constraint is, thus, required to make sure the DGs are available to pick up the loads after natural disasters. Fuzzy multi criteria decision making (FMCDM) approach is used in this work to rank the load points and locations/feeder sections. This paper uses particle swarm optimization (PSO) to evaluate the optimal size and location of DGs using the proposed objective function. The obtained results are compared with the results of reliability as an objective function.