Modified sunflower optimization for network reconfiguration and distributed generation placement

This paper proposed modified sunflower optimization (MSFO) for the combination of network reconfiguration and distributed generation placement problem (NR-DGP) to minimize power loss of the electric distribution system (EDS). Sunflower optimization (SFO) is inspired form the ideal of sunflower plant motion to get the sunlight and its reproduction. To enhance the performance of SFO, it is modified to MSFO wherein, the pollination and mortality techniques have been modified by using Levy distribution and mutation of the best solutions. The results are evaluated on two test systems. The efficiency of MSFO is compared with that of the original SFO and other algorithms in literature. The comparisons show that MSFO outperforms to SFO and other methods in obtained optimal solution. Furthermore, MSFO demonstrates the better statistical results than SFO. So, MSFO can be a powerful approach for the NR-DGP problem.