Determination of the optimal control parameters of voltage regulators installed in a radial distribution network

This paper presents a new computation method to determine simultaneously the optimal parameters of several voltage regulators such as the load-ratio control transformer (LRT) and step voltage regulator (SVR) installed in a radial distribution network. The proposed method determines a combination of their control parameters by minimizing the weighted sum of deviations of line voltage from the upper and lower voltage limits and the amounts of voltage violations by referring to the stored data measured by IT switches, which are sectionalizing switches with sensors installed in the distribution feeder. The optimization algorithm is based on particle swarm optimization (PSO), which is one of the nonlinear optimization methods, by using the concept of swarm intelligence. In order to confirm the validity of the proposed method, numerical simulations are carried out on a distribution network model.