A novel severity performance index for optimal allocation and sizing of photovoltaic distributed generations

Abstract Optimal allocation and sizing of the distributed generations (DGs) attract great attention of many researchers all over the world. In this study, the problems associated to optimal DGs allocation and sizing are divided into two sub-problems. One of them deals with the DGs allocation at the critical buses and the other aims to select the optimal size of these DGs. A novel severity performance index (SPI) is introduced to evaluate both the power system reliability and quality. The crow search (CS) is integrated with PSO not only to collect the merits of both CS and PSO but also to solve the optimal power flow problem including multi-DGs allocated at the critical buses for the IEEE 30-bus test system. Detailed comparisons of four distinct DGs allocation cases are presented, discussed, and analyzed. The simulation findings proved that the DGs allocated based on the multi-objectives (SPI, total fuel costs; F C ; and power losses; P L ) have a superior performance compared to other cases in terms of voltage profile, branches loading, power losses, and total costs. Therefore, the multi DGs is preferred to be allocated based on these multi-objectives (SPI, F C , and P L ) in order to attain additional techno-economic benefits to the power system.