The paper develops two new approaches based on alternative analytical expressions to determine the optimum sizes and power factors of distributed generation (DG) units at various locations for minimizing power losses and a methodology to identify the best location. These approaches can be easily adapted to accommodate different types of renewable DG units (i.e., biomass, wind and photovoltaic) for minimizing energy losses by considering the time-varying demand with all possible operating conditions of DG units. The results obtained on a 69-bus distribution system demonstrate that the proposed methods based on one load level can be adequate to determine the location, size and power factor of DG unit for minimizing energy losses.