Interactive Bi-objective with Valuable Trade-off programming, together with a modified particle swarm optimization for the daily scheduling of switched capacitors is presented. The two main contradictory concerns of line loss reduction and minimum number of switching operations are considered for realistic request. Both the operating and load constraints for distribution feeders are formulated for practical operation. The proposed approach can provide a set of flexible and valuable trade-off solutions as dictated by decision makers of electric utilities. Quantitative measures can also be provided to aid the decision-making process. To demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed approach, comparative studies were systematically conducted on an actual feeder. The experiment showed encouraging results suggesting that the proposed approach was capable of efficiently determining better quality solutions, (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.