A Differential Evolution Based Method for Power System Planning

Power system planning is a complex multi-objective optimization problem. It aims at locating the minimum cost of additional transmission lines that must be installed to satisfy the forecasted load in a power system. A number of different methods for power system planning have been investigated over the past decades. In this paper, a differential evolution (DE) based approach is proposed as an optimization tool to solve the power system planning problem. A comparison between genetic algorithms, evolutionary strategy (ES), and five different DE schemes are carried out on two benchmark power systems. The results shown that, as a relatively new heuristic optimization method, DE is able to provide robust and efficient solution to power system planning problems.