Smart EA operators for effective service restoration of compensated distribution networks

An effective service restoration (SR) strategy for distribution network plays a key role in improving service reliability and enhancing customers´ satisfaction. Several evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have been developed in order to solve this problem. However, most of them do not include compensators in the plan. Others use some simplifying assumptions in order to limit the search space, which degrade the quality of obtained results. In addition, EAs suffer from high computational burden especially when improper modeling and operators are used. This paper proposes a set of Smart operators for the EA in order to effectively solve the SR problem of compensated distribution networks in an integrated framework. The proposed operators improve the EA´s performance by guiding the search to more productive areas of the search space using more information about status of the network. Simulations prove efficiency of the proposed method by providing fast and high quality results.