Capacitors dispatch for quasi minimum energy loss in distribution systems using a loop-analysis based method

The dispatch of capacitors in distribution systems for daily operation is investigated in this paper. The objective is to determine the next day operating schedule of the capacitors so as to minimize the total daily energy loss. A loop-analysis based analytic algorithm is developed in this paper to efficiently calculate the optimal settings of capacitor with time-varying load. Firstly, capacitors switching times are determined by a heuristic method. Then, the optimal settings of capacitors for all operating times are calculated by an iterative algorithm. Numerical simulations were done and the results show that the proposed algorithm has an approximately linear convergence and is efficient.