Reactive Power Optimization Using Hybrid CABC-DE Algorithm

Reactive power optimization is closely related to voltage quality and network loss, and it has great significance for the safety, reliability, and economical operation of the power system. Differential evolution (DE) algorithm has been currently applied to reactive power optimization. In order to mitigate the shortcomings of poor local search ability and premature convergence in DE, this paper presents a novel hybrid algorithm–chaotic artificial bee colony differential evolution (CABC-DE) algorithm, which improves the DE algorithm based on artificial bee colony algorithm and ideas of chaotic search. It introduces the observation bees' acceleration operation and the detective bees' chaotic search operation into CABC-DE. The validity of the proposed method is examined using IEEE-14 and IEEE-30 bus system. The experimental results show that CABC-DE algorithm is more effective than regular DE algorithm for reactive power optimization. The algorithm can save the search time greatly and get a better solution for optimization, thus making it suitable for solving reactive power optimization problems.