An Evolutionary Technique with Fast Convergence for Power System Topological Observability Analysis

In this paper we use genetic algorithms for the determination of the observability of electrical power systems from the point of view of topological observability. The problem can be reduced to the determination of whether a spanning tree that fulfills certain conditions with regards to the use of available measurements exists. To this end we have developed a more appropriate encoding for handling graphs and a more efficient fitness function of low computational cost that is able to avoid local optima and accelerate convergence. The procedure was successfully applied to standard benchmark IEEE electrical power systems and we present some results for one of them.