Development of three phase optimal power flow for distributed generation systems

This paper presents a method of finding the optimal operating point minimizing a given objective function with 3 phase power flow equations and operational constraints, called 3 phase optimal power flow (3POPF). 3 phase optimal power flow can provide operation and control strategies for the distribution systems with distributed generation assets, which might be frequently in unbalanced conditions assuming that high penetration rate of renewable energy sources in the systems. As the solution technique for 3POPF, this paper adopts a simulation-based method of particle swarm optimization (PSO). In the PSO based 3POPF, a utility function needs to be defined for evaluation of the degree in operational improvement of each particle's current position. To evaluate the utility function, in this paper, NR-based 3 phase power flow algorithm was developed which can deal with looped distributed generation systems. In this paper; illustrative examples with a 5-bus and a modified IEEE 37-bus test systems are given.