GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR SECTIONALIZER SWITCHESALLOCATION IN DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM WITH DISTRIBUTEDGENERATION

Distributed generation (DG) refers to having an electricity generator at or near the end-user, wich can bring loss reduction in the electric network and also help to reduce the impact ofsystem failure. The purpose of sectionalizing switches is to isolate the fault for as few customersas possible until it is repaired. This paper proposes a metaheuristic based on genetic algorithmwith a constructive heuristic and a hierarchically structured population, to find solutions for theswitch allocation problem, with distributed generation, considering the reduction on costs withswitches, its maintenance and cost of energy not supplied. The good performance of the proposedmethodology is confirmed by some case studies using a large real energy distribution network. Inthese experiments, the authors compare the results considering systems with and without DG