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Abstract In this work, the performance of distribution systems is improved via reactive power compensation. Reactive power compensation is an important procedure for transmission and distribution power systems. The installation of shunt capacitors on radial distribution systems is essential for power flow control, improving voltage stability, power factor correction, voltage profile management, and loss minimization. It is important to find the optimal size and location of capacitors required to minimize feeder losses (power and energy), and the suitable time to switch the capacitors on and off. Normally, the solution techniques are classified into four categories; analytical, numerical programming, heuristic, and artificial intelligence-based (AI-Based). Many nature inspired meta-heuristic algorithms have been attempted for reactive power compensation of radial distribution feeders. In this work, we introduce and implement a novel accelerated particle swarm optimization technique. Results of the proposed approach are compared with previous methods to show the superiority of the proposed method using many actual distribution feeders (e.g. 9 bus, 15 bus, and 69 bus feeders). This new simple technique has the ability to give the best results for maximum reduction in system losses and costs among all previous studied techniques. In this work, the accelerated particle swarm optimization (APSO) algorithm is reviewed and explained to show its effectiveness in solving the capacitor allocation problem. It is a set of definite arranged procedures guaranteed to lead to the global optimal solution. The research aims to ensure that this new used accelerated particle swarm technique is powerful for solving the capacitor allocation problem for radial distribution feeders. Regardless of the feeder nature, the proposed method gives the maximum power loss and cost reduction accompanied by better voltage profile improvement without buses voltage violation. The technique converges to the optimal solution with high quality. Also the coding of accelerated PSO is simple and gives more accurate results. Up till now, three papers have been accepted from this work; two in international journal and one in MEPCON 2014. Keywords: Radial distribution feeder, Capacitor placement, Cost function, particle swarm optimization |