Optimal Design and Operation of Wind Turbines in Radial Distribution Power Grids for Power Loss Minimization

Abstract

This research proposes a strategy to minimize the active power loss in the standard IEEE 85-node radial distribution power grid by optimizing the placement of wind turbines in the grid. The osprey optimization algorithm (OOA) and walrus optimization algorithm (WOA) are implemented to solve the problem. The two algorithms are validated in three study cases of placing two wind turbines (WTs) in the system for power loss reduction. Mainly, in Case 1, WTs can only produce active power, while in Case 2 and Case 3, WTs can supply both active and reactive power to the grid with different ranges of power factors. In Case 4, the best-applied methods between the two are reapplied to reach the minimum value of the total energy loss within one year. Notably, this case focuses on minimizing the total power loss for each hour in a day under load demand variations and dynamic power supply from WTs. On top of that, this case uses two different sets of actual wind power data acquired from the Global Wind Atlas for the two positions inherited from the previous case. Moreover, the utilization of wind power is also evaluated in the two scenarios: (1) wind power from WTs is fully used for all values of load demand, (2) and wind power from WTs is optimized for each load demand value. The results in the first three cases indicate that the WOA achieves better minimum, mean, and maximum power losses for the two cases than the OOA over fifty trial runs. Moreover, the WOA obtains an excellent loss reduction compared to the Base case without WTs. The loss of the base system is 224.3 kW, but that of Case 1, Case 2, and Case 3 is 115.6, 30.6 kW, and 0.097 kW. The placement of wind turbines in Case 1, Case 2, and Case 3 reached a loss reduction of 48.5%, 84.3%, and 99.96% compared to the Base case. The optimal placement of WTs in the selected distribution power grid has shown huge advantages in reducing active power loss, especially in Case 3. For the last study case, the energy loss in a year is calculated by WSO after reaching hourly power loss, the energy loss in a month, and the season. The results in this case also indicate that the optimization of wind power, as mentioned in Scenario 2, results in a better total energy loss value in a year than in Scenario 1. The total energy loss in Scenario 2 is reduced by approximately 95.98% compared to Scenario 1. So, WOA is an effective algorithm for optimizing the placement and determining the power output of wind turbines in distribution power grids to minimize the total energy loss in years.