A COMPLETE REACTIVE POWER MANAGEMENT STRATEGY USING ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM

This paper proposes a generalized strategy for reactive power management problem during normal and emergency operating conditions. The proposed problem is solved via multi-objective ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. The proposed strategy solves the reactive power management problem and is creating efficient control actions to mitigate the occurrence of voltage collapse in stressed power systems. The proposed multi-objective functions are: minimizing the transmission line losses, maximizing the control actions by; minimizing the voltage deviation of load buses with respect to the specified bus voltages and minimizing the reactive power generation at generation buses based on control variables under voltage collapse, control and dependent variable constraints. In addition, the proposed control actions are checked under emergency conditions without making corrective control actions, while all system constraints are kept within their permissible limits. The proposed ACO-based strategy is tested to the IEEE standard 30-bus test system. The results show the capability of the proposed ACO algorithm for the maximal preventive control actions to eradicate different emergency condition effects.