Hybrid Elephant Herding and Particle Swarm Optimizations for Optimal DG Integration in Distribution Networks

In this article, the amalgamation of two well-established meta-heuristic optimization methods is presented to solve the multi-objective distributed generation (DG) allocation problem of distribution systems. To overcome some of the shortcomings of newly developed elephant herding optimization (EHO), an improvement is suggested and then, a prominent feature of particle swarm optimization is introduced to the modified version of EHO. The suggested modifications are validated by solving a single objective DG integration problem where various performance parameters of the proposed hybrid method are compared with their individual standard variants. After validation, the proposed technique is exploited to solve a multi-objective DG allocation problem of distribution systems, aiming to minimize power loss and node voltage deviation while simultaneously maximizing the voltage stability index of three benchmark distribution systems namely, 33-bus, 69-bus and 118-bus. The obtained simulation results are further compared with that of the same available in the existing literature. This comparison reveals that the proposed hybrid approach is promising to solve the multi-objective DG integration problem of distribution systems as compared to many existing methods.