Using bacterial chemotaxis method for reactive power optimization

Reactive power optimization is one of the key problems in power system which makes the voltage quality and stability improved and the loss of the power system reduced. This paper briefly analyzes the limitation of some reactive power optimization methods for power system and then a more effective method based on bacterial colony chemotaxis is proposed to solve this problem which is a discrete, many variables and nonlinear programming one. We adjust the bacterial colony chemotaxis model to fit the reactive power optimization calculation and make an improvement of it to enhance its convergence speed and search efficiency. This method applies to the IEEE-30, IEEE-57, IEEE-118 bus system, and the result proves the practicability and validity of this method. Compared with SGA and CPSO optimal method, the simplicity and robustness of the process of bacterial colony chemotaxis suggest a research direction which is worth to move on.