FLOWER POLLINATION ALGORITHM APPLIED TO ELECTRIC POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM RECONFIGURING PROBLEM WITH PHOTOVOLTAIC GENERATION
Network reconfiguration is one of the main techniques used to improve the operation of distribution systems. The main objective of the Distribution Network Reconfiguration (DNR) problem is to find a radial network topology with minimal technical losses. This dissertation presents a contribution to solve the DNR problem with photovoltaic generation (PG) using the flower pollination algorithm (FPA). The FPA is a meta-heuristic inspired by the plant pollination process. The proposed approach was tested in distribution systems found in the specialized literature with 5, 16, 33 and 70 nodes, and a large system with 4653 nodes and 6683 lines, based on the real data of a distribution network located in the southeastern of the Greater São Paulo region. To assess network reconfiguration with PG, several scenarios are considered to analyze the impact of network reconfiguration and the presence of PG on system losses in a 24-hour period. The results obtained without the load curve and PG were compared with other techniques available in the literature, proving the effectiveness of the approach in solving the problem. The proposed method reduced by up to 33.35% the losses in the analyzed systems, indicating an adequate efficiency and robustness of the proposed algorithm.