Received May 23, 2020, accepted June 9, 2020, date of publication June 11, 2020, date of current version

June 24, 2020.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3001758

Optimal Location and Sizing of Distributed

Generators Based on Renewable Energy
Sources Using Modified Moth Flame
Optimization Technique
EHAB E. ELATTAR 1,2 , (Senior Member, IEEE), AND SALAH K. ELSAYED 1,3
1 Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Taif University, Taif 21974, Saudi Arabia
2 Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Menoufia University, Shebin El-Kom 32511, Egypt
3 Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo 11651, Egypt

Corresponding author: Ehab E. Elattar ([email protected])

ABSTRACT Due to the great impact of the penetration and locations of distributed generators (DG) on the
performance of the distribution system, this paper proposes a modified moth flame optimization (MMFO)
algorithm. Two modifications are proposed in MMFO to enhance the exploration and exploitation balance
and overcome the shortcomings of the original MFO. The proposed MMFO is used to find the optimal
location and sizing of DG units based on renewable energy sources in the distribution system. The main
objective function is to minimize the total operating cost of the distribution system by considering the
minimization of the total active power loss, voltage deviation of load buses, the DG units cost, and emission.
This multi-objective function is converted to a coefficient single objective function with achieving different
constraints. Also, the bus location index is employed to introduce the sorting list of locations to accomplish
the narrow candidate buses list. Based on the candidate buses, the proposed MMFO is used to get the optimal
location and sizing of DG units. The proposed MMFO algorithm has been applied to the IEEE 69-bus test
distribution system and the results are compared with other published algorithms to prove its effectiveness
and superiority.

INDEX TERMS Modified moth flame algorithm, distributed generators, renewable energy sources, bus
location index, coefficient single objective function.

NOMENCLATURE PDGi , QDGi generated active and reactive power of

CDG cost of all DG units DG unit, respectively
CPLOSS cost of total active power loss PDGimax maximum allowable active power
of the distribution system generated from DG unit
CE cost of emission which targeted PGrid active power injected from grid
to minimize it
Pd , Qd demand of active and reactive
CVD reflection of the voltage deviation
power, respectively
on the cost
Cc capital cost ($/KW ) QLOSS reactive power losses
Fc variable fuel cost ($/KWh) QGrid reactive power injected from grid
OMc operating and maintenance cost ($/KW − year) Vi , Vj magnitudes of the voltage at buses
r interest rate (9%) i and j respectively
n investment life time (20 − years) VD voltage deviation at load buses
PL total real power losses in all buses VM maximum allowable voltage
Pk , Qk active and reactive power injected at VM = 1.0 p.u
bus k, respectively VLi voltage at load bus i
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and VLimax maximum magnitude of voltage at
approving it for publication was Jagdish Chand Bansal. load bus i

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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 E. E. Elattar, S. K. Elsayed: Optimal Location and Sizing of DG Based on Renewable Energy Sources Using MMFO Technique

VLimin minimum magnitude of voltage at The effectiveness of DG performance is more related to the
load bus i choice of their adequate location, types, and sizes, where the
θi , θj angles of the voltage at buses i and j optimal selection will maximize the benefits of DG units used
respectively and avoid their drawbacks for the system such as increasing
ki group of buses that connected to bus i loss of the system, increasing the operating cost and volt-
Gij , betaij susceptance and conductance of bus age instability [8], [9]. Incorporating the DG units into the
admittance matrix, respectively system has different impacts in the case of both steady-state
ω weight factor that can be determined and transient conditions. In the steady-state, there are some
based on the xrii problems like reverse power flow, high power losses, voltage
ri fluctuation, reactive power management, miscoordination of
xi ratio of the feeder resistance
to feeder reactance the protection scheme, poor power quality, regulation, and
Rk resistance of branch k reliability of over-load tap changer (OLTC) [10]–[13]. On the
Ik current flow of branch k other hand, the impacts in the transient state appear due to the
EDG total emission released from all islanding of DG units and the phenomena of the uncertainty
DG units of the output of DG units such as occurring from the variation
CO2,DGi , emission products of DG units of wind speed and shading effects in zones with PV [14]. The
NOx,DGi , SO2,DGi severity of these impacts is based on the locations of DG units
WLOSS factor of power loss ($/MW ) with the amount of DG penetrations and the DG’s technology.
WE emission factor in ($/KG) Also, due to the nature of renewable DG units, the simultane-
WVD voltage deviation economic operator ous variations of DG’s generations for supplying the demand
Sli transmission line loading load may cause under or over voltage. The effects of such
NDG total available number of DG units phenomenon may affect by DG unit locations and weather
Nb number of total branches conditions [15]. In addition, at a specific penetration level of
N number of network buses DG units, the performance of the system is improved, but in
Nl number of load buses contrast, beyond this level, the system was subject to degrada-
MOi the ith moth tion by substation and feeder loading, voltage deviation and
Fk the k th flame increased power losses. Moreover, by increasing the pene-
g logarithmic spiral function tration of DG units, the operation of the automatic voltage
Di distance between the ith moth and regulator (AVR) inside the OLTC of the transformer becomes
and k th flame more sophisticated and incapable because of occurring the
s constant indicates the shape of the phenomena of reverse power flow and accompanied with high
logarithmic spiral voltage and current which can be controlled by employing
ε random number ∈ [−1, 1] different methods summarized in [9], [16].
c the convergence constant Consequently, the problem of determining the optimal
Nf maximum number of flames location and sizes of DG units has subject to great interest
it current number of iteration recently in order to achieve many objectives such as min-
maxit maximum number of iterations imization of real power loss, improvement voltage profile,
improvement power system quality and increasing both effi-
ciency and reliability of the distribution system. So, various
I. INTRODUCTION approaches are proposed in the literature to solve this
Recently, the distributed generators (DG) integrated into the problem [3], [17]–[21].
distribution system have major positive impacts on the perfor- The authors in [3] proposed a novel method to determine
mance of the system, due to its ability to decrease the loss of the optimal size and location of DGs to not only reduc-
transmission lines, improve the voltage stability, increasing ing the power loss but ensuring the voltage stability of
the reliability and reducing the pollutant emission based on the system. The improved gravitational search algorithm is
DG technology types [1]–[3]. proposed in [19] to get the optimal placement and sizing
The penetration of DG units in the distribution system is of solar photovoltaic based DGs to minimize the total cost.
becoming more widespread because of the growth of demand A combined method of an intelligent water drop (IWD) and
load, reduction of pollutant emission and deregulated of the hybrid (GA) were proposed in [22] to determine the size
electrical power market. Several DG units technologies are and location of DGs in micro-grid for increasing voltage
used and categorized according to fuel energy used into dis- stability, reduce network losses and improve voltage pro-
patchable and non-dispatchable units. The former includes, file. A hybrid fuzzy logic controller technique and ant-lion
for example, diesel generators, micro-turbine, and fuel cell. optimization algorithm’s with particle swarm optimization
While, the later includes, renewable energy sources based on based combination is proposed in [23] to solve the optimal
DG units such as solar photovoltaic systems, wind turbine allocation of distributed generations in a radial distribution
generators, biomass and micro-hydro generators [4]–[7]. network to minimize the total cost of operation and deviation

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E. E. Elattar, S. K. Elsayed: Optimal Location and Sizing of DG Based on Renewable Energy Sources Using MMFO Technique

of voltage indexes. In [24] at different load levels, the objec- the optimal location and sizing of DGs based on different
tive function to find optimal location and sizing of DGs is dispatchable and non-dispatchable DGs units in order to min-
reducing real and reactive power losses which solved by imize the total operating cost of the distribution system. The
using biogeography-based optimization (BBO) algorithm. total objective function consists of the minimization of fuel
An efficient optimization algorithm to optimally allocate the cost, total real power loss, voltage deviation and pollution
multiple DG units in distribution systems based on sine cosine emission for some DGs is treated as weighted economic oper-
algorithm (SCA) and chaos map theory is proposed in [25] ators, where a multi-objective problem is converted to coeffi-
using three objective functions. cient single objective function (CSOF) with considering some
Nowadays, the DGs are planned optimally to achieve eco- constraints of the system. The performance of the developed
nomic motive during the liberalized modern power market, approach is tested using a standard test system and compared
so the optimally planning of distributed generators is very with other published methods to discover its notability for
important for the operators in the distribution network [26]. solving the problem described here. The contributions of this
In the real distribution network, there are different config- paper are to:
urations with many huge buses. In addition to several load • Propose the MMFO algorithm which improves the com-
levels which may be taken into consideration at different plementary features of the original MFO by improving
periods, moreover, there are geographical and environmental the balance between the exploration and exploitation and
constraints, this means a very large number of buses to be avoiding the problems of the original MFO.
nominated for distributed generators. All of that may be • Introduce the problem formulation of finding the opti-
making the choice of the optimal location and size is not easy mal location and sizing of DG units based on renewable
and take a huge time. So it is better to use a technique reducing energy sources to minimize the total operating cost con-
the nominated buses to save the time of searching according sidering four different objective functions.
to network configuration. Therefore, the bus location index • Use the proposed MMFO algorithm to solve the above
is employed in this paper to create a priority ranking list of problem by converting the multi-objective function con-
candidate buses. sists of four different functions into a coefficient single
In 2015, the moth flame optimization (MFO) is proposed objective function (CSOF).
as a new technique to solve optimization problem in [27]. The • Enhance the solution of the above problem in compari-
MFO which is considered as one of the novel nature-inspired son with the obtained results from published algorithms
algorithms simulates the navigation method of moths for based on different cases and scenarios using the IEEE
travelling for long distances. The MFO is appropriate for 69-bus test distribution system.
solving many practical optimization problems because of its This paper is organized as follows: Section II introduces
brilliant characteristics [28]–[31]. the bus location index (BLI) technique. The mathematical
As known, the balance between exploration and exploita- model of the objective problem is described in Section III.
tion is the greatest significant features for any generalized In Section IV the MMFO technique is discussed. The simula-
approach. The exploration points to exploring the global tion results for the test system are presented with a discussion
search while the exploitation refers to the local search. in Section V. Finally, Section VI presents the conclusions of
According to the theory published in [32], no algorithm the proposed work.
is the best appropriate for all the optimization problems.
II. BUS LOCATION INDEX (BLI)
Therefore, there are different modifications are proposed by
It is known that any change in the injected active and reactive
researchers to improve the characteristics of the MFO regard-
power at any bus of the distribution system will lead to a
ing the proper balance between exploitation and exploration
change in total real power losses. According to this con-
capabilities.
cept, the bus location index (BLI) is formulated as described
The opposition based MFO method is proposed in [33]
in [36]. The real power losses can be written as in [37] as
to overcome the disadvantages of the conventional MFO
following.
which are trapping in local optima and the slow convergence.
N X
In [34] the conventional MFO is combined with lévy flights X
to gain their merits and to decrease the computational times, PL = Vi Vj [Gij cos(θi − θj ) + βij sin(θi − θj )] (1)
i=1 j∈ki
especially for the highly complex optimization problems.
The chaotic MFO is proposed in [35] to enhance the bal- The power balance equations are written as follow:
ance between exploitation and exploration capabilities by N
X
employing two chaotic mechanisms. 1Pk = Pk − Vk2 Gkk − Vk Vj [Gkj cos(θk − θj )
This paper proposes a modified moth flame optimization j=1,j6 =k
(MMFO) algorithm. Two modifications are made in the orig- + βkj sin(θk − θj )] (2)
inal MFO to derive the proposed MMFO in order to improve N
X
the balance between the exploration-exploitation capabili- 1Qk = Qk − Vk2 βkk − Vk Vj [Gkj sin(θk − θj )
ties of the algorithm and speed up the convergence of the j=1,j6 =k
algorithm. Then, the proposed MMFO is employed to find − βkj cos(θk − θj )] (3)

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The variation in real power losses based on the previous B. TOTAL POWER LOSS FORMULATION
concept may be described as follow in [37] The active power losses of the distribution system can be

∂PL
 
∂PL
 described as follow [40]
 ∂P  −1  ∂θ 
  Nb
 ∂PL  = J  ∂PL 
  (4) X
PLOSS = |Ik |2 Rk (10)
∂Q ∂V k=1

where ∂P L ∂PL
∂P and ∂Q are the power loss derivative with respect
The cost of active power losses can be formulated as
to injected active and reactive power at bus i respectively. ∂P
∂θ
L following:
∂PL
and ∂V are the power loss derivative with respect to angle and
CPLOSS = PLOSS WLOSS (11)
the voltage of bus i respectively. J is the jacobian matrix,
∂1P ∂1P
 
C. POLLUTION EMISSION FORMULATION OF DG UNITS
 ∂2 ∂V  According to DGs technologies, there are some types of DGs
J = ∂1Q
 (5)
∂1Q  that generate CO2 , SO2 and NOx , to deliver the required
∂2 ∂V output power. The reflect of emission on the cost of DG units
can be expressed as following in [41]
where ∂1P ∂1P
∂2 and ∂V are the partial derivatives of injected
active power with respect to angle and voltage magnitude NDG
respectively. ∂1Q ∂1Q X
∂2 and ∂V are the partial derivatives of EDG = E(PDGi ) (12)
injected reactive power with respect to angle and voltage i=1
magnitude respectively. E(PDGi ) = (CO2,DGi + NOx,DGi + SO2,DGi )PDGi (13)
The BLI can be expressed as follow in [38] for each bus.
∂PL ∂PL The cost of emission released by DG units may be formu-
BLI = ω + (1 − ω) (6) lated as follow:
∂P ∂Q
ri
xi CE = EDG WE (14)
ωi = ri (7)
xi +1
D. VOLTAGE DEVIATION FORMULATION
The weight factor may be a unique value and is calculated
The penetration of DG units may be cause variation in the
as the mean value of all weight factors of buses. This value
distribution system voltage. Therefore, the voltage violation
is accepted particularly and can be used in BLI equation due
should be limited. The voltage deviation can be defined as
to the xrii variation will be very small because all feeders have
follow [39]
the same parameters and the same voltage level. According to
the values calculated by BLI, the priority ranking list can be Nl
X
constructed in descending order, which means that the greater VD = |Vi − VM | (15)
values of BLI are more favorable to connect DGs. i=1

III. OBJECTIVE PROBLEM FORMULATION

The reflection of the voltage deviation on the cost can be
The target of the objective problem proposed here is finding expressed as follow:
the optimal location and sizing of DGs based on renewable
CVD = VD WVD (16)
energy sources to minimize the total operating cost with
considering equality and inequality constraints. Where some
E. EQUALITY AND INEQUALITY CONSTRAINTS
coefficients are utilized to integrate different objective func-
tions for creating only CSOF which used to minimize the total According to the objective problem proposed, there are two
cost of the system. types of constraints as following:

A. COST FORMULATION OF DG UNITS 1) EQUALITY CONSTRAINTS

The total cost of DG units contains capital installation Power balance equation with considering DG units in the
cost, fuel cost, operating and maintenance cost. It may be distribution system can be defined as follow [42]
formulated as follow [39] NDG Nl
X X
N
XDG PGrid + PDGi = Pd (j) + PLOSS (17)
CDG = C(PDGi ) (8) i=1 j=1
i=1 NDG Nl
(1 + r)n − 1
X X
QGrid + QDGi = Qd (j) + QLOSS (18)
C(PDGi ) = Cc PDGimax + (Fc + OMc )PDGi (9)
r(1 + r)n i=1 j=1

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2) INEQUALITY CONSTRAINTS After the initial population of moths and flames are gener-
a: VOLTAGE LIMIT CONSTRAINTS ated randomly, the mathematical model of transverse orien-
The voltage at each bus of the distribution system should be tation behaviour can be expressed. The position of each moth
limited as following [42]: which is guided by the flames can be updated as follows [27]:

VLimin ≤ VLi ≤ VLimax (19) MOi = g(MOi , Fk ) (24)

b: DG LIMIT CONSTRAINTS The logarithmic spiral function can be expressed using the
The minimum and maximum allowable values of the active following equation [27]:
and reactive output power of DG units in the distribution
g(MOi , Fk ) = Di · exp(sε) · cos(2π ε) + Fk (25)
system can be defined as follow:
D can be expressed as follows [27]:
Pmin max
DGi ≤ PDGi ≤ PDGi (20)
Qmin max
DGi ≤ QDGi ≤ QDGi (21) Di = |Fk − MOi | (26)

c: FEEDER CONSTRAINTS The parameter ε is a very important parameter in (25)

The loading for each branch of distribution system should be where it controls the flying direction of the moth around the
limited using the following equation: flame. Equation (25) permits a moth to navigate around a
flame and not essentially within the space between them.
Sli ≤ Slimax (22) To confirm exploitation property, the parameter ε is chosen
as a random number ∈ [c, 1]. The parameter c which called
F. TOTAL OBJECTIVE FUNCTION the convergence constant is linearly decreased from −1 to −2
In this paper, the above four objective functions which are the over the iterations.
minimization of fuel cost, total real power loss, voltage devi- Also, to improve the exploitation property, the number
ation and pollution emission for some DGs are combined and of flames is decreased progressively with the iterations as
converted into CSOF based on some coeficients. Therefore, follows [27]:
the total objective function can be expressed as follows:  
Nf − it
Flame number = round Nf − it ∗ (27)
F = CDG + CPLOSS + CE + CVD maxit
= CDG + PLOSS WLOSS + EDG WE + VD WVD (23) More details and the pseudo code of the original MFO
algorithm can be found in [27].
IV. PROPOSED OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM
A. MOTH FLAME OPTIMIZATION OVERVIEW B. MODIFIED MOTH FLAM OPTIMIZATION (MMFO)
Moth-Flame Optimization (MFO) recently proposed in [27] To derive the proposed MMFO method, two modifications
is a population-based algorithm which mimics the moth’s are made in the conventional MFO. In the conventional MFO,
navigation way in nature. It is based on the navigation way the convergence constant (c) is linearly decreased from −1 to
named transverse orientation of the moths. The main idea of −2 over the iterations. Although this decrement emphasizes
the transverse orientation method is employing a fixed angle the exploitation property of the algorithm, it reduces the
with respect to the moon by moths during flying. The moths convergence rate of the conventional MFO. Thus, the conver-
attempt to keep the fixed angle when they see an artificial gence constant is decreased exponentially from −1 to −2 in
light that is very close in comparison with the moon, but they this paper to guarantee the exploration-exploitation balance
fail. So, they fly in a logarithmic spiral mechanism during and increase the convergence rate of the conventional MFO
convergence with the flame [27], [34]. as follows:
The model of the MFO algorithm consists of two important
2 !
components. They are moth and flame. The moths repre-

it
sent the members (solutions) which move around the search c = exp − −2 (28)
maxit /2
space, while the flames represent the best position (problem’s
variables) found for these members. The MFO begins with an It is clear from (27) that the number of flames will reduce
initial population of moths and flames which are randomly with iterations. This reduction in the flames’ number makes
generated. The moth movement is oriented by the flames. the balance between the exploitation and exploration. There-
The fitness value of each moth is then calculated based on the fore, equation (27) is modified in the proposed MMFO to
problem objective function. In the next iteration, the number enhance the balance between exploitation and exploration of
of flames is decreased by removing the unfit flames which the algorithm as follows:
guide the moths to move to the fittest flame. These processes   
are repeated until only one flame remains which means that it
Flame number = round Nf ∗ exp − (29)
the best solution for the problem is obtained. maxit /4

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V. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS TABLE 1. BLI values for the IEEE-69 bus system.
The developed method presented in the previous section is
applied to the IEEE-69 bus radial distribution test system
which described in [43] and shown in Fig. 1. The system
consists of the main root bus represent the utility grid at
bus 69, 70 branches where the system voltage is 12.66 kV.
The system load active and reactive power are 3.86 MW and
2.69 MVAR, respectively. While the maximum and minimum
voltage limits are 0.95 and 1.05 p.u., respectively [41], [44].

FIGURE 1. Single line diagram of IEEE-69 bus radial distribution test

system.

The notability of the developed MMFO method in deter-

mining the optimal location and sizing of different DG sorting in descending order, accordingly, the first twenty
units is proved in this paper compared with other pub- buses from the table were chosen for primary locations of
lished algorithms. These algorithms are ant lion optimizer DG units. Then the MMFO method is used to find optimal
(ALO) [45], grey wolf optimizer (GWO) [46], dragon- placement and sizing of DG based on the proposed objective
fly algorithm (DA) [47], conventional MFO [27], modified function.
JAYA (MJAYA) algorithm [48], and Salp swarm algorithm The simulation results are executed with consideration of
(SSA) [49]. the system maximum load. Moreover, the maximum capacity
In the implementation of the proposed MMFO and other of DG power is limited to 30% of the total load demand.
meta-heuristic methods, many parameters should be chosen. In addition, the DG units can deliver active power and reactive
In this paper, the appropriate values of these parameters are power where the DG units are represented as PQ model at
obtained based on empirical tests. All the numerical studies power factor 0.9 [41], [44], [50].
have been run on 2.9-GHz i7 PC with 8 GB of RAM using To evaluate the MMFO method, different scenarios are
MATLAB 2014a. carried out as follows:
Firstly, the sorting list of buses is obtained using the BLI
• Location and sizing for one DG unit
method described in section II to create narrow candidate
• Location and sizing for two DG units
buses as shown in Fig. 2. Table 1 shows candidate buses
• Location and sizing for three DG units
In all scenarios, there are six types of DG units (fuel
cell, micro-turbine, photovoltaic, wind, hydro and biomass).
The specifications of these types can be found in [39], [51].
Table 2 shows the capital costs, variable fuel cots, average
operating and maintenance costs, and emission factors for
NOx , SO2 and CO2 [39], [41], [52]. Also, the maximum
capacity of all DG power is limited to 30% of the total load
demand in the range of 0.1 MVA to 1.48 MVA [53], [54].

A. LOCATION AND SIZING FOR ONE DG UNIT

According to different technologies of renewable energy
FIGURE 2. BLI values for the IEEE-69 bus radial distribution test system. sources as DG units, the simulation results for locating and

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TABLE 2. Economic and emission factors of DG units.

FIGURE 4. The effect of using two DG units on voltage profile using the
FIGURE 3. The effect of using one DG unit on voltage profile using the developed MMFO.
developed MMFO.
with other meta-heuristic techniques, based on employing
sizing one DG unit using a developed MMFO in comparison two micro- turbines at optimal buses 60 and 63 with optimal
with other techniques are shown in Table 3. In addition, sizing of 0.4423 and 0.6 MVA, respectively where the total
the effect of using one DG unit on the voltage profile using cost of the system is equal to 2.0555M $. In addition, the total
the developed MMFO is shown in Fig. 3. real power loss is reduced to 0.0628 MW which represents
The results show that the minimum total cost of the a percentage reduction of 72.08% from the real power loss
system was obtained by using the proposed MMFO com- without any DG unit. The minimum voltage is increased
pared with other meta-heuristic optimization techniques. from 0.9092 p.u to 0.9635 upon using two micro-turbines.
A great benefit is obvious of the proposed MMFO when In addition, Fig. 4 shows that the best voltage profile obtained
using one micro-turbine at optimal bus 60 with optimal siz- when two micro-turbines are used.
ing of 0.6144 MVA where the total cost of the system is
1.7690 M $ with a reduction of the total power losses to C. LOCATION AND SIZING FOR THREE DG UNITS
0.1001 MW which represents percentage reduction 55.15 % In this case, to prove the superiority of the developed MMFO
from the real power loss without any DG unit. The minimum for finding the optimal location and size of DG, it is applied
voltage is increased from 0.9092 p.u to 0.9446 and 0.9488 p.u for three units of DG. The simulation results for locating and
when using one micro-turbine and one fuel cell, respectively. sizing three DG units based on developed MMFO in compar-
In addition, Fig. 3 shows that the best voltage profile can be ison with other published techniques are shown in Tables 5
obtained when one fuel cell is used. and 6. Furthermore, the effect of using three DG units on the
voltage profile based on proposed MMFO is shown in Fig. 5.
B. LOCATION AND SIZING FOR TWO DG UNITS The results clearly indicate that the superiority of the
To confirm the efficiency of the developed MMFO to obtain proposed MMFO over other methods, where it gives the
the best location and size of DG, it is applied for two units of minimum total cost. The minimum total cost obtained using
DG. The simulation results for locating and sizing two DG the proposed MMFO with inserting three micro-turbines at
units using a developed MMFO in comparison with other buses 60, 61 and 63 with optimal sizing of 0.6477, 0.3185 and
recently published techniques are shown in Table 4. Also, 0.2293 MVA, respectively and the total cost of the system
the effect of using two DG units on voltage profile based on equal to 2.3064 M $. By inserting three micro-turbines in the
the developed MMFO is shown in Fig. 4. system, the total power loss is decreased to 0.0576 MW which
These results prove that the minimum total cost of the sys- represents a percentage reduction of 74.4 % from the real
tem may be obtained using the proposed MMFO compared power loss without any DG unit. While the minimum voltage

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TABLE 3. Results for using one DG unit.

can be increased from 0.9092 p.u to 0.9666 while using three In addition, the efficiency of the investigation is improved
units of the fuel cell. In addition, Fig. 5 shows that the best whereas preserving the equilibrium through exploitative and
voltage profile can be obtained when three units of the fuel exploratory.
cells are used. From the simulation results, the optimal location and
sizing of DG’s are different for all cases according to dif-
D. DISCUSSION ferent technologies of DG’s based on the suggested objective
By employing the reduced sorting list of buses based on function. However, the proposed MMFO technique offering
the BLI method, the computational time can be minimized. great performance compared with other meta-heuristic

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TABLE 4. Results for using Two DG units.

optimization techniques. The main benefits of the proposed It is seen that the locations of DGs are sequentially take
technique are achieved when using multiple DG units. placed by applying the proposed method for the PV, wind, and
The outstanding performance of MMFO proposed is micro-turbine where the optimal location bus calculated in
assigned through the locations of multiple DG units with case of single DG is repeated in case of two DG units, finally
different technologies simultaneously. The verification of the the case of three DG units will contain the buses selected in
proposed method is achieved by considering the elaborate previous cases.
investigation for the location and sizing of two and three DG When using three DG units, the proposed method gives
units with different technologies. better results in comparison with using one or two DG units
In case of using one DG with different technologies, referring to the reduction of power loss and voltage deviation.
the most optimal location bus has been 60 based on For example, Figures 6 and 7 show the relation between
the proposed MMFO results with sizing varying between the size (number of DG units), power losses and voltage
0.6144 MW to 0.7975 MW. deviation, respectively when one, two or three micro-turbines

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TABLE 5. Results for using Three DG units: Part A.

are used. These figures indicate that the reduction of power for different types of DG technology where the increasing
loss is increased from 55.15 % and 72.08 % using one or two number of DG units will increase the total system cost.
micro-turbine units, respectively to 74.4 % using three micro- To show the convergence property of the developed
turbine units. Moreover, the voltage deviation is reduced MMFO in comparison with other methods, Figs. 8 and 9
from 1.3666 and 1.1205 using one or two micro-turbine units, illustrate the convergence curves of the developed MMFO
respectively to 1.0607 % using three micro-turbine units. and other methods in case of using three DG units. From
The multiple locations of DG units might be useful but these figures, one can observe that the objective function of
should be inspected firstly economically as seen from results the developed MMFO converges smoothly to the optimum

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E. E. Elattar, S. K. Elsayed: Optimal Location and Sizing of DG Based on Renewable Energy Sources Using MMFO Technique

TABLE 6. Results for using Three DG units: Part B.

solution without any unexpected oscillations which approves To further prove the effectiveness of the developed MMFO
the convergence dependability of the developed MMFO. method over other methods, Figs. 10- 12 show the computa-
In addition, the developed MMFO needs fewer iterations in tional time for the developed MMFO method and other algo-
comparison with other methods to obtain the solution. This is rithms for one, two, and three DG units, respectively. These
due to the improved exploration and exploitation mechanism results prove that the developed MMFO method is more
in the developed MMFO. effective than others when computational time is considered.

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FIGURE 5. The effect of using three DG units on voltage profile using the
developed MMFO.
FIGURE 8. Comparison between the convergence characteristics of the
developed MMFO and other methods in case of use three DG units:
Part A.

FIGURE 6. The relation between the size and power losses when one,
two or three micro-turbines are used based on MMFO. FIGURE 9. Comparison between the convergence characteristics of the
developed MMFO and other methods in case of use three DG units:
Part B.

FIGURE 7. The relation between the size and voltage deviation when one,
two or three micro-turbines are used based on MMFO. FIGURE 10. The computational time of all methods for using one DG unit.

The computational time of the developed MMFO is quite few cases. As a whole, the developed MMFO is computation-
less and better than other optimization methods in most cases ally efficient than the conventional MFO and other methods
while it is comparable with other optimization methods in a as a result of using the improved exploration and exploitation

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E. E. Elattar, S. K. Elsayed: Optimal Location and Sizing of DG Based on Renewable Energy Sources Using MMFO Technique

with other meta-heuristic methods evidently demonstrate

that the MMFO algorithm outperformed these meta-heuristic
methods whatever the number of DG units.

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