Utility of PSO for power loss minimization in a power system network

This paper presents a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based algorithm to optimize the power flow in a power system network. Transmission loss function has been used as the problem objective. Various constraints participating in the problem formulation are voltage magnitude constraint, tap setting value constraint and nodal reactive capacity constraint. Load flow studies using standard Newton-raphson method and incorporation of optimization method using PSO have been done for standard IEEE 14-bus system and IEEE 30-bus system. Simulations are carried out using MATLAB. Optimal strings for bus parameters are obtained such that the transmission losses are minimized. Also the effect of variation of number of particles along with the changing number of iterations is compared for both the systems. Effect of constriction factor on the rate of convergence has been shown graphically.