Hybrid Differential Evolution Particle Swarm

Optimization Algorithm for Reactive Power

Optimization
Shouzheng Wang, Lixin Ma, Dashuai Sun
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Univ. of Shanghai for Sci.& Tech.
Shanghai, P.R.China
wlwarren@126.com, ma_eeepsi@usst.edu.cn

Abstract—Reactive power optimization is a mixed integer
nonlinear programming problem where metaheuristics
techniques have proven suitable for providing optimal solutions.
In this paper, swarm and evolutionary algorithm have been
applied for reactive power optimization. The objective of this
nonlinear optimization is minimization of system losses and
improvement of voltage profiles in a power system. A hybrid
differential evolution particle swarm optimization algorithm is
presented to obtain the global optimum. The proposed algorithm
is implemented on the IEEE 14-bus system. To validate the
effectiveness of the algorithm, the simulation results are
compared with other optimization algorithms’. It is shown that
the approach developed is feasible and efficient.
Keywords- reactive power optimization; differential evolution;
particle swarm optimization; hybrid differential evolution particle
swarm optimization
obtain optimal solutions to some real valued problems
efficiently [4, 5]. However, because of its no use of global
information about the search space, DE may be trapped in local
optima. Also, basic PSO has drawbacks of prematurity, slow
search speed and low convergence accuracy [6]. Recently,
many improved PSO algorithms have been proposed by
incorporating with DE, so as to explore better solutions. Some
hybrid DEPSO algorithms have been applied to reactive power
optimization problem successfully [7, 8], however, so far no
conclusive conclusion has been reached in which hybrid
DEPSO algorithm is better than the others.
In this paper a hybrid differential evolution particle swarm
optimization algorithm which is inspired by the paper [6], is
developed to solve the reactive power optimization problem.
The proposed algorithm is implemented on the IEEE 14-bus
system.

I. INTRODUCTION
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
The reactive power optimization problem has a significant
influence on secure and economic operation of power systems. A. Objective Function
With the regulation of the voltage level of the generators, the Mathematically, the objective function of the reactive
taps of the transformer with OLTC and the switchable shunt power problem can be formulated as follows:
capacitor/reactor groups, and so on, the reactive power
optimization must improve system voltage profiles while NB
minimizing system losses at all times. min Ploss = ∑ G [V ij i
2
+ V j2 − 2ViV j cos(δ i − δ j )] .
Conventional optimization techniques such as nonlinear i =1, j∈i
programming, linear programming, and quadratic (1)
programming et al. have been used to solve the reactive power
optimization problem [1]. However, because of the non- Transformer tap-setting T and generator bus voltages VG are
differential and non-linearity nature of the reactive power control variables so they are self-restricted. Load bus voltages
optimization problem, majority of these techniques converge to VB and reactive power generations QG are state variables, which
a local optimum. In recent years, many new stochastic search are restricted by adding them as the quadratic penalty terms to
methods have been developed for the global optimization the objective function to form a generalized objective function
problem such as genetic algorithm [2], simulated annealing [3] as
and many others. These techniques search for the global or V − Vi lim 2
quasi-global optimum and the results reported were promising min f = Ploss + λV ( i ∑
Vi max − Vi min
)
and encouraging for further research in this direction. i∈ N B

Qi − Qi lim 2
Differential evolution (DE) and particle swarm
optimization (PSO) are population-based optimization
+ λQ ∑ (Q
i∈ N g i max − Qi min
) .
algorithms. Due to their excellent convergence characteristics (2)
and few control parameters, DE and PSO have been applied to

Sponsored by Innovation Foundation of Shanghai (Grant NO.08YZ100)

978-1-4244-4813-5/10/$25.00 ©2010 IEEE

where Ploss is the active power loss in the system; NB and Ng are III. HYBRID DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION PARTICLE SWARM
the sets of total buses and generator buses respectively; λV and OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM
λQ are penalty coefficients of the constraint violations of the
voltages of PQ-buses and the reactive power of PV-buses A. Differential Evolution(DE)
respectively; Vi and Qi are the voltage magnitude of bus i and The main strategy of DE is to generate a new position for
the reactive power of PV-bus i respectively; Vimax ,Vimin ,Qimax an individual by calculating vector differences between other
,Qimin are the upper and lower limits of bus voltages and the randomly selected members of the population [4]. The
reactive power output of PV-buses respectively; Gij is the following are the main operators of DE algorithm.
mutual conductance between buses i and j; δi, δj are the voltage
phase angles of bus i and bus j respectively; and Vilim, Qilim are 1) Mutation: For each vector Xik (target vector), select three
expressed as: distinct vectors Xak, Xbk and Xck randomly from the current
population other than vector Xik. Generate a new population
⎧Vi max if Vi > Vi max vector on the formula
⎪ (3)
Vi lim = ⎨Vi min if Vi < Vi min ,
⎪V X i'k = X ak + F ( X bk − X ck ). (11)
⎩ i others
2) Crossover: Generate trial vectors applying the selected
⎧Qi max if Qi > Qi max crossover scheme. The following expression describes the
⎪
Qi lim = ⎨Qi min if Qi < Qi min . (4) crossover process
⎪Q others ⎧⎪ X i' k
⎩ i if rand ≤ C R
X i'' k = ⎨ . (12)
B. Constraints ⎪⎩ X ik otherwise
The minimization of the above objective function is subject 3) Selection: Evaluate the trial vector and decide whether
to a number of constraints: or not it will be part of the next generation by greedy strategy.
The following expression represents the selection method:
Pgi = Pdi − Vi ∑ V (G
j∈ N i
j ij cos δ ij + Bij sin δ ij ) , i ∈ N 0 (5) ⎧⎪ X i'' k
X ik = ⎨
if fitness ( X i'' k ) ≥ fitness ( X ik ) (13)
⎪⎩ X ik otherwise
Qgi = Qdi − Vi ∑V (G
j∈N i
j ij sin δ ij − Bij cos δ ij ) , i ∈ N PQ (6) F and CR are the control parameters. F guides the
amplitude of the influence of the difference vector and CR
represents the amount of the candidate solution that is used.
Vi min ≤ Vi ≤ Vi max i ∈ NB (7)
B. Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO)
In PSO, a swarm of particles flies through a D
Ti min ≤ Ti ≤ Ti max k ∈ NT (8) dimensional search space with a velocity which is dynamically
adjustable according to its own flying experience and its
companion’s. The best previous position of a particle is
(9) recorded and represented as pbest. The position of the best
Qgi min ≤ Qgi ≤ Qgi max i ∈ NG
particle among all the particles is represented as gbest. The
velocity and position of each particle in the k-th iteration of
Qci min ≤ Qci ≤ Qci max i ∈ NC (10) the swarm can be computed using the following formulas
which are proposed by [5]:

where N0, NPQ, NT, NG and NC are the sets of total buses
excluding slack bus, PQ buses, transformer branches, generator
buses and capacitor buses, respectively; Pgi and Qgi are the
specified active and reactive power supply at bus i; Pdi and Qdi
are the specified active and reactive power demand at bus i; δij
is the voltage phase angle difference between buses i and j; Bij
is the susceptance between buses i and j; Tk is the tap position
of transformer k; Qgi and Qci are the reactive power outputs of
generator at bus i and capacitor at bus j respectively; and Tkmin,
Tkmax, Qgimin, Qgimax, Qcimin, Qcimax are the lower and upper limits
of transformer tap positions, reactive power output of
generators, and reactive power output of capacitors
respectively.
vidk +1 = wvidk + c1r1 ( pbestidk − xidk ) + c2 r2 ( gbestdk − xidk ), (14)
xidk +1 = xidk + vidk +1. (15)
where r1 and r2 are uniformly random numbers between 0 and
1; vidk and xidk are the current velocity and position of
individual i in dimension d at iteration k respectively; pbestidk
is the previous position of individual i in dimension d; gbestdk
is the position of the best particle in the swarm in dimension d;
c1 and c2 are the cognitive and social acceleration constants
respectively.
The use of linearly decreasing inertia weight factor w has
provided improved performance in all the applications.
Suitable selection of the inertia weight provides a balance
between global and local exploration and exploitation by
dynamically adjusting the velocity and it is calculated using
(16).
wmax − wmin
w = wmax − ⋅ iter
itermax
where itermax is the maximum number of iterations; iter is the
current iteration number; wmax, wmin are the maximum and
minimum inertia weight.
The particle velocity is limited by the maximum value vmax.
If vmax is too high, then the particles might fly past good
solutions. If vmax is too low, then the particles will take a long
time to reach the desired solution or not explore sufficiently
beyond local solutions. In this paper, 20% of the variable
dynamic range is adopted as the limit of vmax.
C. Hybrid Differential Evolution Particle Swarm
Optimization Algorithm(PSOPDE)
Inspired by advantages and disadvantages of DE and PSO
respectively, a hybrid of DE and PSO gives a new method of
optimization called PSO with Prior-crossover DE (PSOPDE)
[6]. In PSOPDE, the average position and average velocity of
particles also leads the particles to optimal solution besides the
pbest position and the gbest position. Thus the novel velocity
updated formula is described as (17). In order to improve local
search performance of PSO, DE operator is integrated with
PSO computation. Additionally, a new crossover operation as
expressed in (20) between target population and an extra
population is implemented before DE component, which
increases the diversity of the particle swarm and helps to reach
the global optimum.
vidk +1 = wvidk + c1r1 ( pbestidk − xidk ) + c2 r2 ( gbestdk − xidk )
k k k k
+ c3 r3 ( pbestave , id − xid ) + c4 r4 ( gbest ave, d − xid )
N
k
pbest ave ,d = ∑ pbest
i =1
k
id N (18)
N
k
vave ,d = ∑v
i =1
k
id N (19)
⎧⎪ zidk if rand ≤ C R'
yid' k = ⎨
⎪⎩ xidk otherwise
where r3, r4 are uniformly random numbers in the range (0, 1);
c3, c4 are the scale factors like c1 and c2; pbestave,dk and vave,dk
are the average position and velocity respectively; zik is an
individual from the extra population that has the same size as
the initial target population; CR’ is the prior crossover factor
like CR.
The brief procedure of implementation of PSOPDE for
reactive power optimization can be written as follows:
Step 1) Input parameters of the system and the algorithm.
Initialize all the particles (velocity vi1and position xi1)
randomly in the target population P1, and the positions of
individuals zi1 in the extra population P2 in boundaries, and
evaluate the fitness fitness(xi1) of each target particle, k=1.
Step 2) Perform a Newton-Raphson power flow for every
(16)
particle and calculate the fitness of pbest and gbest. Stop the
algorithm if the terminal criterion is satisfied, otherwise
k=k+1.
Step 3) Calculate the average position pbestave,dk-1 and
average velocity vave,dk-1 as (18) and (19). Update the velocity
vik and position xik of each particle according to (17) and (15),
and evaluate the fitness fitness(xik).
Step 4) Implement prior crossover between xik and the
particle zik in P2 as (20). Compare the offspring yi’k with xik,
and replace xik with yi’k if yi’k is better.
Step 5) Generate the mutant vector Xi’k using (11).
Step 6) Generate the trial vector Xi’’k from Xi’k and xik
according to (12).
Step 7) Compete Xi’’k with xik using (13). If
fitness(Xi’’k)≥fitness(xik), replace xik with Xi’’k. Otherwise
replace yi’k with Xi’’k if fitness(Xi’’k) ≥fitness(yi’k) in (20). Go to
step 2.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
The proposed PSOPDE is applied for reactive power
optimization on the IEEE 14-bus system in MATLAB 7.0
language and run on a Celeron(R) 2.66-G computer.
The IEEE 14-bus system consists of 20 branches, four
generators, and three transformers. The possible reactive power
source installation bus is 9. Bus 1 is selected as the slack bus
and designated to correct transmission loss changes. Bus 2, 3,
6, 8 are PV buses, and the remaining buses of the test system
are PQ buses. Branch 5-6, 4-7, 4-9 are the transformer
branches. Variable limits are similar to those in [9]. Reactive
power output of capacitor banks and transformer taps are
(17)
discrete variables with the change step of 0.05p.u. and
0.0125p.u. respectively. The basic apparent power of the test
system is set to 100MVA.
To verify the performance of PSOPDE, the simulation
results are compared to those of DE and basic PSO. The three
methods have the same population size, 30, and maximum
iteration itermax=100. The parameters of PSOPDE are as
follows: wmax=0.9, wmin=0.4, c1=c2=2.0, c3=c4=0.01, CR’=0.5
(20) and F=0.15; and the crossover factor CR, rise by CR=CRmin+(
CRmax- CRmin)*(iter-1)/itermax, while CRmin=0.5 and CRmax=1.0 [6]
. The mutation factor F and the crossover factor CR of the DE
approach are set to 1 and 0.4 respectively. To the basic PSO, its
acceleration constants are set to c1=c2=2.0, and its inertia
weight factor is set to w=1.
Each method is executed 20 times when applied to the test
system because of the random nature of all stochastic search
algorithms. The best, worst and average solutions of these
algorithms are presented in Table I. Obviously the PSOPDE
can obtain optimal results among the three methods, which
confirm that the PSOPDE is well capable of finding the global
or quasi-global optimum solution. It can be seen that the 0.165

average power losses reduction of 10.937% (from 0.13770p.u. 0.16

DE
PSO

to 0.12264p.u.) was accomplished by PSOPDE while DE 0.155

PSOPDE

achieved 8.214% (from 0.13770p.u. to 0.12639p.u.) and basic 0.15

Power Losses(p.u.)
PSO achieved 10.653% (from 0.13770p.u. to 0.12302p.u.). 0.145

Meanwhile, PSOPDE shows considerable performance by 0.14

keeping the difference between the best and worst solutions

0.135

0.13

within 0.1%, while this difference for DE and PSO is 4.3% and 0.125

1.0% respectively. It is shown that the convergence 0.12

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

performance of PSOPDE is stable and robust. Number of Iterations

However, on the one hand, according to the average Fig.1 Constringency curve with DE, PSO and PSOPDE Methods for
execution time presented in Table I, PSOPDE takes the most IEEE 14-bus system
CPU execution time among the three algorithms under the
same iterations. Because there are DE operators and extra
population updates operators in the PSOPDE method, from the
High and Low Voltage Profile Limits
1.1
simulation most time is spent on the fitness evaluation for those
operators, which needs to run an AC load flow in the test 1.05
system. On the other hand, from the convergence

Voltage (p.u.)
characteristics of the three methods depicted in Fig.1, it is clear 1

that the active power loss is drastically reduced and the

solution by PSOPDE is converged to high quality solutions at 0.95

the early iterations. The results proved that the proposed Initial Voltage Profile
PSOPDE algorithm provides higher-quality solution with 0.9 Final Voltage Profile(DE)
Final Voltage Profile(PSO)
smaller iterations than the other two methods. Final Voltage Profile(PSOPDE)
0.85
The results of the voltage profile corrections for DE, basic
2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Bus Number

PSO and PSOPDE methods are comparatively presented in Fig. 2 Voltage Profile Correction for DE, PSO and PSOPDE
Fig.2. For this case, the three algorithms brought the bus
voltages within the voltage limits. Also, PSOPDE methods can
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