Optimal reconfiguration and capacitor placement by robust searching hybrid differential evolution

摘要

This paper aims to study distribution system operations by the robust searching hybrid differential evolution (RSHDE) method. The objective of this study is to present new algorithms for solving the optimal feeder reconfiguration problem, the optimal capacitor placement problem, and the problem of a combination of the two. Mathematically, the problem of this research is a nonlinear programming problem with integer variables. This paper presents a new approach which employs the RSHDE algorithm with integer variables to solve the problem. Depending on the initial assignment of the integer variables, the HDE may fail to find the initial search direction for large-scale integer system. This is because the HDE applies a random search at its initial stages. Therefore, two new schemes, the multi-direction search scheme and the search space reduction scheme, are embedded into the HDE. These two schemes are used to enhance the search ability before performing the initialization step of the solution process. The proposed approach is demonstrated using an IEEE illustrative example and one practical distribution network of Taiwan Power Company (TPC). Moreover, the previous HDE, simulated annealing (SA) and genetic algorithms (GA) methods are also applied to the same example systems for the purpose of comparison.