LAUSR

Abstract Distributed generation (DG) is a new approach for solving some problems of older power networks. Due to the increasing power demand in recent power systems, the importance of power loss reduction and maintaining system voltages within an acceptable range has given rise to the wide use of DG units in power systems. On the other hand, unplanned and non-optimal application such as installation and operation of DG units might cause other technical problems. In addition, it is important to consider the load pattern in the network, and the best decision for DG unit's operation must be chosen accordingly. In this paper, a method is introduced in order to make the optimal placement and find an optimal operating point for the DG units, which means the power output of DG units, considering the load pattern of the network. This load pattern has an average load of 24 hr a day, four seasons a year. In the proposed method, optimization has two goals: first, is optimizing the DG unit's placement based on improvement of the voltage profile, and the second is operating DG units with optimum power factor, minimizing power loss, and improving voltage profile, with regard to the load pattern. In order to solve this problem, the gravitational search algorithm and genetic algorithm are used. The proposed method is applied on the IEEE 33-bus test system, and the result shows the effectiveness of the proposed method. In order to solve the optimization problem, MATLAB software is used.