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Power factor correction projects are required to supply reactive power locally to power system loads. The main advantage for the consumer is reducing the electricity bill, which factors in reactive demand. Other advantages can also result from these projects, including voltage regulation at local buses, energy loss minimization in the transmission lines and increased system capacity to add additional load. These advantages will be maximized by optimally allocating the power factor correction devices to reduce the bill. With these great advantages, consideration needs to be given to several technical issues, including resonance and switching transient associated with capacitor installations. The latter is investigated in this paper in the context of a planning horizon of 20 years. The objective function is to implement the lowest cost option that meets both the energy loss minimization and voltage regulation requirements. A new factor is considered during placement: the effect of transient switching events when energizing and deenergizing capacitor banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power system reliability measures for residential distribution networks have gained a lot of attention in recent years. This is due to the introduction of smart grids, where the quality of the delivered power becomes a crucial issue. In this paper, a new methodology to include cold load pickup (CLPU) events in the reliability assessment of power distribution systems is proposed. The developed methodology presents a platform to include CLPU events in the reliability assessment assuming an optimal systematic procedure is used to restore the affected load points. The methodology is applied on a test system using a state-of-the-art search technique named lightning search algorithm (LSA). The optimal plan takes into account electrical code protection system settings, system operation limits, and stochastic behavior of the load. The reliability indices for a base case without considering CLPU is compared with the case that considers CLPU assuming an optimal restoration. Both cases are compared further under fixed-restoration plans with different time intervals. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology to improve the distribution network reliability by considering the CLPU events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]