A neighbor-chain updating approach for multi-objective reconfiguration of electrical system

This paper presents a new multi-objective heuristic approach for reconfiguration of radial electrical distribution system based on a circular neighbor-chain-updating process. The proposed method (PM) attempts to exchange each tie switch of the initial configuration with its best neighborhood switch, which is regularly updated until there is no change in the objective function (OF). This process creates a chain of the updated open switches. Besides, OF as a multi-objective function includes minimizing a combination of total power loss and maximum voltage drop of electrical system. The PM has been performed and compared to other existing ones on three standard electrical distribution networks. The results show that this method has a considerable contribution in finding optimum solution and can be applied separately or with other optimization approaches to improve the accuracy of final configuration.