ON THE APPLICATION OF VARIOUS META-HEURISTIC METHODS TO THE OPTIMAL REACTIVE POWER FLOW PROBLEM FOR PRACTICAL POWER NETWORKS

Abstract

An efficient distribution of the reactive power in an electric network aims generally to maintain voltages in acceptable limits and control transmission losses. This paper presents a comparative study of solving the optimal reactive power flow (ORPF) problem using several meta-heuristic techniques such as simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, evolutionary strategy, particle swarm optimization and Tabu search. Results application to a large electric network that is representative of the 114 bus Algerian electric system are reported. To show the contribution of these techniques, the results of simulation are compared with previous studies using the reduced gradient method technique.