Optimal power flow with discontinous fuel cost functions using decomposed GA coordinated with shunt FACTS

Abstract

This paper presents efficient parallel genetic algorithm (EPGA) based decomposed network for optimal power flow with various kinds of objective functions such as those including prohibited zones, multiple fuels and multiple areas. Two coordinated sub problems are proposed: the first sub problem is an active power dispatch (APD) based parallel GA; a global database generated containing the best partitioned network: the second subproblem is an optimal setting of control variables such as generators voltages, tap position of tap changing transformers and the dynamic reactive power of SVC Controllers installed at a critical buses. The proposed approach tested on IEEE 6-bus, IEEE 30-bus and to 15 generating units and compared with global optimization methods (GA, DE, FGA, PSO, MDE, ICA-PSO). The results show that the proposed approach can converge to the near solution and obtain a competitive solution with a reasonable time.