Modified direct-ZBR method PSO power flow development for weakly meshed active unbalanced distribution systems

Electrical distribution system is a part of electrical system that is directly connected to the customers. Reliability and power quality of electrical distribution system must be maintained so that they can use electricity continuously. Many methods can be done to improve them of electrical distribution system, such as penetration of Distributed Generations (DG's) and weakly meshed distribution network reconfiguration. These methods will change a passive distribution network to an active one with weakly meshed configuration. Due to the special characteristics of distribution systems, this paper introduces a three phase power flow method that can handle passive/active and radial/weakly meshed distribution networks. The Modified direct-Z_BR method is developed in this proposed method and combined with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The proposed method is applied to 20 kV distribution network in Surabaya city, East Jawa, Indonesia. Three simulation cases are studied for the test system. The computational speed of three simulation cases shows the number of iterations for these cases are increased but the apparent losses decrease. It means that the proposed method is robust and suitable for weakly meshed reconfiguration. The results show that the proposed power flow method can handle the active unbalanced distribution system with weakly meshed configuration.