TRANSFORMER AND FEEDER LOAD BALANCING USING A HEURISTIC-SEARCH APPROACH

In the operation of a distribution system, transformer and feeder load balancing is important since it can reduce the risk of overloads due to load changes. To achieve load balancing, the configuration of the distribution network must be modified by changing the open/closed states of the switches on distribution feeders. In this paper, heuristic search algorithms based on some heuristic rules are proposed to reach the desired switching operations through which transformer and feeder load balancing can be achieved. The proposed method can be applied to changing load conditions as well as constant load conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by conducting feeder reconfiguration on a distribution system within the Taipei South District Office of Taiwan Power Company. It is found that the desired switching operations can be reached in a very efficient manner by using the proposed algorithms.