Reactive power optimization based on genetic algorithm

This paper presents an improved genetic algorithm (GA) for optimizing power system reactive power. Based on a basic GA, an integer/float mixed coding GA is proposed in this paper. The objective function of the proposed method is to minimize the system active power loss. The control variables are generator bus voltages, transformer tap positions and switchable shunt capacitor banks. The refined GA overcomes the drawbacks of conventional reactive power optimization methods. The proposed method has been applied to the practical ward-Hale 6 bus system and IEEE 30-bus system. The test results show that this method is a very feasible and practical method