MINIMIZATION OF POWER LOSSES IN 33/11KV DISTRIBUTION NETWORK USING GENETIC ALGORITHM AND SHUNT COMPENSATION TECHNQIUE

Subject Area: Electrical Power

This paper presents the minimization of power losses in 33/11KV distribution network using genetic algorithm and shunt capacitor compensation. A technical study of the 15MVA, Thinker’s corner 33/11KV injection feeder (testbed) was conducted with Gauss Seidal load flow analysis to read the transformer behavior, while relationships between the active and reactive current components were used to read the losses. The data was collected from the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC). Model of the testbed was developed, loss model developed, model of the capacitor sizing developed and the strategic algorithm for capacitor deployment using Genetic technique developed. The models and algorithm were implemented with Simulink and evaluated with configuration parameters inspired from the testbed. The result showed that the capacitor bank was able to induce reactive power to correct the power factors due to high loss rate. The algorithm was then integrated on the testbed and used to identify all the bus with poor power factor such as the 11.5MVA, 11KV Abakpa 1 and 0.7MVA5, 11KV GRA distribution transformers respectively. The result when tested showed that all the bus with poor power factor due to losses were corrected with an average power factor of 0.988019 as against 0.911649 without capacitor, thus presenting a percentage improvement of 7.7296%.