Abstract
Technological developments in the deregulated electricity market enable competitive environment for Distribution Companies (DISCOs) and DGs to maintain reliable, effective and secure electrical power to the consumers. The performance of the DISCOs in radial distribution networks is primarily relied upon the power loss and voltage stability. Best practice to mitigate the losses in the distribution network includes capacitor placements, induction of DGs and network reconfigurations. These process help out to improve the system voltage profile and minimize the power losses and thereby maximising the profit of the distribution companies. In this paper, recently developed and comprehensive moth flame optimization algorithm is presented for maximizing the profit of the DISCOs under competitive environment. The execution process of network reconfiguration and proper placement and sizing of capacitors and DG units are taken care of by MFO algorithm. Reconfiguration of network is a mechanism of shuffling existing pattern of feeders duly changing ON and OFF status of tie-line switches to improve the performance of the DISCOs. The algorithm also minimizes the various types of cost such as investment, maintenance and operational cost. The proposed MFO algorithm is implemented on IEEE 33 node and 69 node systems to evaluate its performance. Evaluation of solution in MATLAB software demonstrates the skills of MFO in DISCOs.