Modern power systems are in the process of entering in a new stage of development where will be fundamentally different from classical ones, which implies new challenges and approaches. By carrying out of command, control, protection, automation, metering and power quality monitoring complex systems, the prerequisites for an electricity distribution network to become intelligent ("smart grid") are created. However, a set of issues remains related to how such an infrastructure is used in order to maximize consumer supply safety, minimize losses of active power, optimize power quality indices etc. The central idea is that a "smart grid" must be an optimized network. In this paper, the authors present their vision on the issue of optimizing the operation of an electric distribution network.
