WHALE OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR OPTIMAL LOCATION AND SIZING OF RENEWABLE DISTRIBUTED GENERATION

Renewable generation is a viable source of clean and smart energy in a modern distribution network. Thus, the synergy between photovoltaic and small-hydropower yields a complementary and uninterruptible power output. However, location and sizing mostly affect operational output. This paper presents a combined Voltage Stability Index estimation (VSI) and Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) for the optimal allocation of renewable-based energy sources. The nodes voltage stability index is ranked to signal the whale optimization selection of candidate solution agents at each algorithm iterations. Thereby turning the Distributed Generation (DG) node selection into non-random mode to improve simulation time and performance. The WOA technique is modeled using the hunting activities of whales and analysed on IEEE 33 bus systems. The results confirm the algorithm’s improved performance of 89% voltage improvement and 48.50 power loss reduction for single PV integration. The technique ensures efficient network resource management for improved output