Optimal capacitor placement in radial distribution system using QPSO

In this paper, the capacitor placement problem in a radial distribution system is formulated and solved using Quantum- Behaved Particle Swarm Optimization (QPSO). QPSO is an efficient and powerful population-based optimization technique, which is inspired by the classic Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and quantum mechanics theories. The objective is to minimize the annual cost incurred due to kW losses and the annual cost due to capacitor installation while satisfying the physical and technical constraints on the network. The algorithm is tested on two radial test systems with 33 and 69 nodes. The solutions obtained by QPSO algorithm are compared with classical PSO. In the case studies, simulated results indicate that the QPSO produces more accurate results than the classical PSO.