The forecasting of electricity demand has become one of the major research fields in electrical engineering. Accurately estimated forecasts are essential part of an efficient power system planning and operation. In this paper, a modified version of the support vector regression (SVR) is presented to solve the load forecasting problem. The proposed model is derived by modifying the risk function of the SVR algorithm with the use of locally weighted regression (LWR) while keeping the regularization term in its original form. In addition, the weighted distance algorithm based on the Mahalanobis distance for optimizing the weighting function's bandwidth is proposed to improve the accuracy of the algorithm. The performance of the new model is evaluated with two real-world datasets, and compared with the local SVR and some published models using the same datasets. The results show that the proposed model exhibits superior performance compare to that of LWR, local SVR, and other published models.

Power system operators and planners have progressively shown an interest in maximizing distribution automation technologies. The automated distribution systems (ADS) provide the capability of efficient and reliable control which require an optimal operation strategy to control the status of the line switches and also dispatch the controllable devices. Therefore, this paper introduces an efficient and robust technique based on Jellyfish Search Algorithm (JFSA) for optimal Volt/VAr coordination in ADSs based on joint distribution system reconfiguration (DSR), distributed generation units (DGs) integration and Distribution static VAr compensators (SVCs) operation. The suggested technique is used for the dynamic operation of ADS in order to minimize losses and reduce emissions when considering regular daily loading conditions. The 33-bus and 69-bus delivery DSs have been subjected to a variety of scenarios. These situations are mostly concerned with achieving optimum distribution system operation and control, as well as validating the proposed methodology. Despite the problem’s complexity, the proposed technique based on JFSA is shown to be the best solution in all of the cases considered. Furthermore, a comparison of the proposed JFSA with other similar approaches demonstrates its usefulness as a method to be used in modern ADS control centers.