Testing ordinal optimization approach in power distribution system control

This study presents an ordinal optimization based approach to the power distribution control problem. Primary task of the distribution control is the minimization of total power losses. Secondarily, it aims at keeping the bus voltages at acceptable values against different loading levels. Control operation is performed by capacitor switchings and on-load tap changer adjustments at substations. This operation involves a large search space with a considerable computational burden. Ordinal optimization theory presents proper tools in handling this burden. This theory reduces the size of the problem by defining the "good enough" subset as the top-m% of the search space, which is obtained through a different procedure of ranking candidate solutions.