Graph theory-enhanced integrated distribution network reconfiguration and distributed generation planning: A comparative techno-economic and environmental impacts analysis

In today's world, eco-friendly solutions are crucial for efficient power delivery and assessing their corresponding economic and environmental benefits is essential. As innovators, it is also imperative to continually improve on existing techniques to solve a problem. Evaluating the existing literature in this area of study, gaps of improving the optimization techniques by reducing the amount of infeasible configurations the reconfiguration procedure encounters was established, additionally, the need to utilize distributed generations that significantly reduce carbon footprint in the environment was also ascertained. Hence, this paper presents an effective integration method for the simultaneous reconfiguration of Radial Distribution Networks (RDNs) and Photovoltaic (PV) DGs allocation, considering the tripodal issues of cost, operational efficiency, and environmental sustainability. A modification of the adaptive mountain gazelle optimizer (AMGO) enhanced with graph theory is deployed for the optimization procedures. The crucial feature of the proposed approach is the reduction of unfeasible configurations throughout the optimization procedure toward satisfying the network's radiality constraints, achieving consistent convergence and reduced computation time. The technical benefits are active power loss minimization, voltage stability, and voltage profile improvement. The economic benefits are analyzed by estimating the purchased power, the associated cost of power losses, and the cost of DGs and switches over a planning period of 20 years. The consequent environmental benefits are analyzed in detail, highlighting the significant reduction in pollutant emissions. The proposed model was tested on the IEEE 33- and 69-bus RDN, considering several scenarios, including synchronous network reconfiguration and DG installations. From the results procured, the simultaneous network reconfiguration and DG allocation provided better outcomes, yielding minimum active power loss of 35.36 kW, minimum voltage of 0.9541 p.u., voltage stability index of 1.9936 p.u., total planning cost of $3.456 million, and emission of 1.744 million lb/hr, respectively, for the 33-bus systems. The corresponding value for the 69-bus system is 32.57 kW, 0.9832 p.u., 2.3847 p.u., $ 2.524 million, and 2.53 million lb/hr, respectively. The proposed model was compared with other reported techniques for performance validation, and its efficacy and superior performance was established.