This paper presents a novel application of watercycle algorithm (WCA) for optimal
distribution network reconfiguration (DNR) and distributed generation (DG)
allocation in radial distribution network (RDN). WCA is proposed to
simultaneously have the optimal topology of RDN and get the optimal DG size and
placement. The objective is to minimize power losses and the voltage profile index.
in addition, study the variation in both voltage magnitude and voltage stability
profiles. Loss sensitivity factor index is utilized to crop the candidate buses for DG
allocation aiming to narrow the search space for DG sizing. Moreover, the graph
theory is presented to get the fundamental loops that used to reduce the search
space for DNR by limiting the infeasible configurations during the optimization
process, where the connection matrix of the radial network is used to check the
radial constraint of each configuration. The proposed method has been applied on
two different RDN with different scenarios. The obtained results verify the
effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in comparison with previous works in
literature.