Wind energy has posed new challenges in both transmission and distribution systems owing to its uncertain nature. The effect of wind turbines (WTs) on the actual payments charged by upstream networks to distribution system companies (DISCOs) is one challenge. Moreover, when the grid-connected inverters of WT operate in the lead or lag modes, WTs absorb or inject reactive power from the system. This paper proposes an approach to assess the importance of operation modes of WTs to minimize the costs by DISCOs in the presence of system uncertainties. Accordingly, an optimization problem is formulated to minimize the costs to DISCO by determining the optimal locations and sizes of WTs in optimally reconfigured distribution systems. In addition, an improved vector-based swarm optimization (IVBSO) algorithm is proposed because it is highly suitable for vector-based problems. Two distribution systems are used in the simulations to evaluate the proposed algorithm. Firstly, the capabilities of the IVBSO algorithm to determine better solutions over other heuristic algorithms are confirmed using the IEEE 33-bus test system. Secondly, the BijanAbad distribution system (BDS) is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization problem. Accordingly, the distribution system model, cumulative distribution function of wind speed, and load profile are all extracted from the actual data of the BijanAbad region. Finally, the optimization problem is applied to BDS in both the lead and lag modes of WTs. Results indicate that the total costs of DISCO are lower when WTs operate in the lag mode than in the lead mode.