A comparison study on particle swarm and Evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization using capacitor placement problem

This paper reports the comparison study of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and evolutionary particle swarm optimization (EPSO) algorithms and their application to the optimal capacitor placement in radial power distribution system. Using JAVA language, software programs have been developed with PSO and 2 variant EPSO algorithms. The comparison study is then carried-out on the various versions of EPSO and PSO algorithms to analyze the performance of each algorithm in solving the capacitor placement problem. A power distribution system from Melaka, Malaysia has been used in this study. The results clearly indicate that EPSO is superior to PSO in finding the optimal solution and handling more complex, nonlinear objective functions due to its self-adaptability. However, EPSO is more computationally intense, requiring more computational time per iteration.