Tuned reactive power dispatch through modified differential evolution technique

This paper explores the capability of modified differential evolution (MDE) technique for solving the reactive power dispatch (RPD) problem. The proposed method is based on the basic differential evolution (DE) technique with a few modifications made into it. DE is one of the strongest optimization techniques though it suffers from the problem of slow convergence while global minima appear. The proposed modifications are tried to resolve the problem. The RPD problem mainly defines loss minimization with stable voltage profile. To solve the RPD problem, the generator bus voltage, transformer tap setting and shunt capacitor placements are controlled by the MDE approach. In this paper, IEEE 14-bus and IEEE 30-bus systems are chosen for MDE implementation. The applied modification show much improved result in comparison to normal DE technique. Comparative study with other soft-computing technique including DE validates the effectiveness of the proposed method.