Technical and Economic Evaluation of the Optimal Placement of Fuel Cells in the Distribution System of Petrochemical Industries Based on Improved Firefly Algorithm

Distributed production power plants, which are used to generate electricity near users, have a production capacity of several KW to 10 MW. Solar cells, fuel cells, micro-turbines, wind farms, and other types are some examples of them. The network will experience several benefits if these power plants are linked to it, including a decrease in network waste, an improvement in the voltage profile, and an increase in network dependability. The lack of proper placement of scattered generation power plants in the network causes an increase in losses and an increase in energy production and transmission costs, so it is necessary to place these power plants in the network with optimization methods; In this way, the number of distributed generation power plants, their installation location, and their capacity is determined in such a way that the greatest reduction of network losses occurs taking into account the constraints of the problem. In this chapter, an improved firefly algorithm is utilized for the optimum situation of the fuel cell, the placement, and the load distribution program and then, it has been implemented and implemented on the standard test networks of 30 buses and a part of the petrochemical power distribution system. For a better analysis of the evaluation results, the system load change index is presented as a ratio of the entire system load in the places where the fuel cell is installed, which shows the effectiveness of the improved firefly algorithm in facing these changes. It should be noted that the data required for programming the load distribution and simulating the mentioned systems have been implemented using the Matlab program and the Psat toolbox.