Security-constrained Optimal Power Flow: A Parallel Self-adaptive Differential Evolution Approach

Abstract

This article proposes a parallel self-adaptive differential evolution with augmented Lagrange multiplier method (pSADE_ALM) to solve security-constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF) problems. The proposed pSADE_ALM is a modified version of sequential self-adaptive differential evolution (SADE_ALM) by exploiting parallel processing techniques to increase the search capability of the algorithm via PC cluster 3 × 2.8 GHz Pentium IV processors. An IEEE 30-bus system is investigated based on two cases, i.e., (1) the base-case optimal power flow (OPF) problems and (2) the SCOPF problems. The proposed pSADE_ALM shows very impressive results compared with others, e.g., gradient-based methods, tabu search-based methods, evolutionary programming (EP), improved evolutionary programming (IEP), and SADE_ALM.

Keywords:

• differential evolution
• optimal power flow
• parallel processing
• PC cluster
• security constraints

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Thailand Research Fund (TRF) for granting us the Royal Golden Jubilee Scholarship under contract PHD/0046/2547.

Notes

^a Based on 50 different runs on PC cluster 31 × 2.66 Pentium IV processors.