Differential Evolution based OPF with Conventional and Non-Conventional Cost Characteristics

An efficient evolutionary-based approach, termed as differential evolution (DE), is presented for the solution of optimal power flow (OPF) with the continuous variables. The continuous control variables are unit-active power outputs and generator-bus voltage magnitudes, transformer tap settings and switchable shunt devices. The differential evolution is illustrated for two case studies of IEEE-30 bus system. Both conventional and non-conventional cost characteristics are considered for the optimal power flow solution. The feasibility of the proposed method is compared with a simple evolutionary programming algorithm. The algorithm is computationally faster, in terms of the number of load flows executed, and provides better results than other heuristic techniques.