Determination of newly installed feeder route considering use of existing feeder

In planning a distribution system for an urban area, when a feeder is newly installed, the route of the feeder must be determined among many candidates, considering investment cost and constraints. However, it is difficult for planners to find the optimal route of the newly installed feeder, because too many candidate routes exist which can be constructed along roads in the service area of the power company, and it must be considered whether the end part of an existing feeder can be used as a part of a newly installed feeder within specified loaded value. In this paper, in order to support planners' decision making in selecting an optimal route for newly installed feeders, the authors have formulated the problem mathematically, and propose a new solution algorithm to find the optimal route by the Dijkstra method. Through numerical examples, the authors demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.