Application of particle swarm optimization technique for reactive power optimization

Power system operators/planners are always faced with the problem of how to minimize the transmission losses. Reactive power plays an important role in supporting the real power transfer by maintaining voltage stability and system reliability. The optimal reactive power dispatch problem is a nonlinear optimization problem with several constraints. This paper presents a new algorithm for optimizing reactive power using Particle Swarm Algorithm. The objective function of the proposed algorithm is to minimize the system active power loss. The control variables are generator bus voltages, transformer tap positions and switch-able shunt capacitor banks. The proposed algorithm has been applied to practical IEEE 6-bus system. The proposed algorithm shows better results as compared to previous work.