Practical application of evolutionary computing to reactive power planning

The paper presents a practical application of evolutionary programming (EP) to reactive power planning (RPP). The proposed approach has been used in a real power system in England. Simulation results, compared with those obtained by using an improved genetic algorithm (IGA) and a conventional gradient-based optimisation method, Broyden´s method, are presented to show that the present method is better for power system planning. Several cases simulating the real network situation of both normal operation and the operation with line outages have been studied. For all these cases, EP is much better than the others. The comprehensive real-state simulation results show a great potential for applications of EP to real-life power system economical and secure operation, planning and reliability assessment