Distribution System Reconfiguration with Soft Open Point for Power Loss Reduction in Distribution Systems Based on Hybrid Water Cycle Algorithm

In this paper, the role of soft open point (SOP) is investigated with and without system re-configuration (SR) in reducing overall system power losses and improving voltage profile, as well as the effect of increasing the number of SOPs connected to distribution systems under different scenarios using a proposed hybrid water cycle algorithm (HWCA). The HWCA is formulated to enhance the water cycle algorithm (WCA) search performance based on the genetic algorithm (GA) for a complex nonlinear problem with discrete and continuous variables represented in this paper by SOP installation and SR. The WCA is one of the most effective optimization algorithms, however, it may have difficulty striking a balance between exploration and exploitation due to the nature of the proposed nonlinear optimization problem, which mostly causes slow convergence and poor robustness. Consequently, the HWCA proposed in this paper is an efficient solution to improve the balance between exploration and exploitation, which in turn leads to improving the WCA’s overall performance without the possibility of getting trapped in local minima. Several cases are studied and conducted on an IEEE 33-node and the IEEE 69- node to investigate the real benefit gained from using SOPs alone or simultaneously with the SR. Based on the obtained results, the proposed HWCA succeeds in enhancing the performance of the proposed test systems considerably in terms of loss reduction (e.g., 31.1–63.3% for IEEE 33-node and 55.7–82.1% for IEEE 69-node compared to the base case) and voltage profile when compared to the base case while maintaining acceptable voltage magnitudes in most cases. Furthermore, the superiority of the proposed method based on the HWCA is validated when compared with the GA and WCA separately for both test systems. The obtained results show the outperformance of the proposed HWCA in attaining the best optimal solution with the least number of iterations.