Abstract:
In this work, an optimal power flow problem (OPF) has been treated where the aim is the identification of the powerful algorithm that can take into account both equality and inequality constraints for solving the OPF problems. For this, a comparative study of thirty algorithms implemented on four cases of bus systems has been achieved. The considered algorithms have been tested on nine objective functions which are the fuel cost, voltage profile improvement, stability index enhancement, gas emission reduction, cost with multi-fuels option, cost with valve-point effect, cost with valve-point effect and multi-fuels option, cost with FACTS devices and security constraints optimal power flow (SCOPF) for the IEEE30, IEEE57, IEEE 118 and the Algerian 59 bus test system. When solving the OPF problem, the control variables have been computed by solving the power flow problem using the Newton-Raphson method. To allow a valid comparison between the algorithms, these last have been performed
under the same computing conditions notably the number of iterations fixed in our case as 500. Two kinds of comparison have been done; parametric and non parametric. The parametric one is based on the consideration of the global optimum, the mean value and the standard deviation while in non parametric comparison we consider the multiple sign test, the Friedman test and the profile performance. The parametric comparison has shown that the ABC algorithm is the best to use for all the considered objective functions for all the treated bus systems followed by the MVPA, ICA, GA-MPC and the DSA algorithms. The non parametric comparison has showed that the MVPA, GA-MPC and the DSA are the best for solving the OPF problems. Taking into account the results of the two comparisons, we conclude that the MVPA, GA-MPC and the DSA are the suitable algorithms for solving the OPF problems.