Abstract
The selection process of conductor size in radial distribution network is very essential issue to improve the performance of the network. The true conductor size selection leads to less power loss, achieve improvement of the bus voltage profile and obtain reduction in the annual operating cost of the system. This paper proposes a novel approach based on crow search algorithm (CSA) for optimal selection of the conductors in a radial distribution network. The CSA is a recent meta-heuristic algorithm which is based on the intelligent behavior of crows. The objective function presented in our work is the sum of conductor capital cost and the conductor energy loss cost. The proposed constraints are bus voltage limits and the current capacity of the conductor. The independent variables are the type and the size of conductor such that minimizing the proposed objective function. The proposed approach is applied on two different network topologies, the first one is 16-bus system and the second is large scale system of 85-bus system. A sensitivity analysis of the CSA controlling parameters are also studied for 16-bus system. The obtained results via CSA are compared to previous works' results; the CSA results encourage the usage of the proposed approach in optimal selecting the conductor type and size in the distribution network. (C) 2017 Karabuk University. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V.