This paper proposes a new formulation of the reactive power planning (RPP) problem. Objectives
are: achieving the minimum investment cost of new injected shunt power capacitors (SPCs),
maximizing the savings due to release MVA transformers capacity through transmission network,
and minimizing the operation costs of power losses. These three objectives are handled as a multi‌objective RPP problem using the mathematical sum approach while satisfying the equality and
inequality constraints. For solving this RPP formulation, the proposed approach employs a new
variant of differential evolution algorithm (DEA) (DE/best/1) which has a high capability of global
search exploitation and fast convergence. The proposed approach is examined and tested on the
West Delta region (WDN) system as a part of the Egyptian Unified network with different
objective functions. The simulation results demonstrate the potential implementation of the
proposed DE variant and show its effectiveness to solve the RPP problem.