Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch (ORPD) Using Particle Swarm

Optimization (PSO)

By
Kartik S. Pandya
Associate Professor
Dept of Electrical Engineering,
CSPIT,
Charotar University of Science and Technoloogy-Changa,
INDIA
Email:kartikpandya.ee@ecchanga.ac.in

Acknowledgements: I am very much thankful to Prof. Ray. Zimmerman (the creator of

MATPOWER software) for permitting me to use this software for executing load flow analysis. I
am also thankful to Mr. Jagatpreet Singh whose PSO codes have been used in this application.
His developed PSO codes are available on MATLAB file exchange.

Important note:

I have solved the optimal reactive power dispatch problem using Particle Swarm Optimization
algorithm for IEEE 30 bus test system. I have used MATPOWER[1] software, version 3.2 for
executing load flow analysis for each particle. As MATPOWER is a system requirement, users
are kindly requested to download it from its website first (www.pserc.cornell.edu/matpower) and
then in the folder of MATPOWER, please include ORPD_30bus.m file. Users are requested to
define some variables as global in some files of MATPOWER as given in table 1.

Table 1: Variables to be defined as global in MATPOWER files

Sr no. File name.m Variables to be defined as global

1 printpf.m global loss
2 runpf.m global bus, gen, branch (In line no. 114)
In runpf.m file, in default arguments, please write casename=case_ieee30 (In
line no. 60)

ORPD_30bus.m can be used to simulate reactive power dispatch of IEEE 30 bus test system
only. For executing it for other systems, the users will have to make necessary changes in
the input data.
Introduction:

Optimal reactive power dispatch is a complex optimization problem in which we try to

optimally set the values of control variables like reactive power output of generators
(generator bus voltages), tap ratios of transformers and reactive power output of shunt
compensators like capacitors etc. to minimize the total transmission active power losses
while satisfying a given set of constraints [2]. I have used basic Particle Swarm
Optimization (PSO) for minimizing the following objective function (1).
All equations are taken from ref. [2].

min P
kN E
kloss g
kN E
k (vi 2 v j 2 2vi v j cos ij )(1)

where,
k (i, j ); i N B (Total no. of buses )
j N i ( No. of buses adjustment to bus i , including bus i )
P
k N E
kloss Total active power losses in the transmission system

g k Conduc tan ce of branch k ( pu )

vi , v j voltage magnitude( pu ) of bus i and j respectively
ij load angle difference between bus i and j (rad )
s.t.
Equality constraints:

Active power flow balance equations at all buses excluding slack bus
Pgi Pdi vi v j ( g ij cos ij Bij sin ij ) 0
jNi

Reactive power flow balance equations at all PQ buses (load buses)

Qgi Qdi vi v j ( gij sin ij Bij cos ij ) 0
jN i

Inequality constraints:
reactive power generation lim it for each generator bus
Qgimin Qgi Qgimax , i N g
voltage magnitude lim it for each bus
vimin vi vimax , i N B

Transformer tap-setting constraint

Tkmin Tk Tkmax

Power flow limit constraint of each transmission line

sl slmax

Static square penalty function is used to handle inequality constrains. So the Augmented
objective function (fitness function) would be as equ(2)

FP
k N E
Pkloss Penalty Function (2)

where,
NG N NL
Penalty Function k1 f (Qgi ) k 2 f (Vi ) k 3 f (S lm )
i 1 i 1 m 1

k1, k 2, k3 10, 000

0 if x min x x max

f ( x) ( x x ) if x x max
max 2

( x min x ) 2 if x x min

Particle Swarm Optimization

PSO is a fast, simple and efficient population-based optimization method which was
proposed by Eberhart and Kennedy [3]. Each particle updates its position based upon its
own best position, global best position among particles and its previous velocity vector
according to the following equations:
vi k 1 w vi k c1 r1 ( pbesti xi k ) c2 r2 ( g best xi k ) (3)

xi k 1 xi k vi k 1 (4)

where,

vi k 1 : The velocity of i th particle at (k 1)th iteration

w : Inertia weight of the particle

vi k : The velocity of i th particle at k th iteration

c1, c2 : Positive constants having values between [0, 2.5]

r1 , r2 : Randomly generated numbers between [0, 1]

pbesti : The best position of the i th particle obtained based upon its own experience

gbest : Global best position of the particle in the population

xi k 1 : The position of i th particle at (k 1)th iteration

xi k : The position of i th particle at k th iteration

: Constriction factor. It may help insure convergence.

Suitable selection of inertia weight w provides good balance between global and local

explorations.

wmax wmin
w wmax iter
itermax

Where, wmax is the value of inertia weight at the beginning of iterations, wmin is the value

of inertia weight at the end of iterations, iter is the current iteration number and itermax is

the maximum number of iterations.

Step by step procedure for ORPD using PSO for IEEE 30 bus test system

(1) Define control variables (vg1, vg2, vg5, vg8, vg11, vg13, T1, T2, T3, T4, QC3,
QC10 and QC24) within their permissible range, define population size, no of
iteration (=200), assume suitable values of PSO parameters, input the data of 30
bus test system
(2) Take iter=0
(3) Randomly generate the population of particles and their velocities
(4) For each particle run NR load flow to find out losses.
(5) Calculate the fitness function of each particle using equ. (2)
(6) Find out personal best (Pbest) of all particles and global best(Gbest) particle
from their fitnesses
(7) Iter=iter+1
(8) Calculate the velocity of each particle using equ. (3)and adjust it if its limit gets
violated
(9) Calculate the new position of each particle using equ. (4)
(10)For each particle run NR load flow to find out losses.
(11)Calculate the fitness function of each particle using equ. (2)
(12)For each particle if current fitness(P) is better than Pbest then Pbest=P
(13)Set best of Pbest as Gbest
(14)Go to step no. 7, until max. no of iterations is completed.
(15)Coordinate of Gbest particle gives optimized values of control variables and its
fitness gives minimized value of losses.
 Simulation results:

The results are stored in diary file. As PSO is a stochastic optimization method, it
gives different optimized results in every simulation. I have considered one of the
best results.

Table 1: Comparison of losses obtained before and after optimization

Sr Losses before Losses after % reduction in

no. optimization optimization losses
1 Active power losses
17.53 16.308 (fxmin) 6.97
(Ploss) MW
2 Reactive power
67.59 64.10 5.16
losses (Qloss) MVAR
3 b=index of Gbest particle

Table 2: Values of control variables after optimization

Bus Control variables Optimized values (xmin)

1 Vg1 (pu) 1.092
2 Vg2 1.073
5 Vg5 1.044
8 Vg8 1.051
11 Vg11 1.090
13 Vg13 1.066
6-9 T1 0.979
6-10 T2 1.015
4-12 T3 1.033
27-28 T4 0.982
3 QC3 (MVAR) 10.788
10 QC10 7.589
24 QC24 11.790
Fig. 1: Convergence characteristic of PSO

Table 3: Selected parameters of PSO

1 Population size 50

2 Acceleration constant (C1, C2) 2.1 and 2.0

3 Constriction factor 0.729

4 Max. and Min. inertia weights 1 and 0.2

5 Max. and Min. velocity of particles 0.003 and -0.003

6 Convergence criterion 200 iterations

Note: User may change the values of these variables and may check their effect on the
value of optimized results.
References:

[1] R.D. Zimmerman et al. ,MATPOWER: Steady-State Operations, Planning and

Analysis Tools for Power Systems Research and Education, IEEE Trans. On Power
Systems, vol. 26, no. 1, Feb. 2011, pp. 12-19.

[2] B. Zhao et al., A Multiagent-Based Particle Swarm Optimization Approach for

Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch, IEEE Trans. On Power Systems, vol. 20, no. 2, May
2005, pp. 1070-1078.

[3]KennedyJ.andEberhart R,Particleswarmoptimization, InProc.oftheIEEE

internationalconferenceonNeuralnetworks,1995,pp.19421948.