Pheromone-Based Crossover Operator Applied to Distribution System Reconfiguration

This paper proposes an algorithm based on hybridization of pheromones derived from ant colony optimization with crossover operator and is applied to minimize real losses in distribution systems using reconfiguration. The algorithm maintains a population of candidate solutions and a table of pheromones to reinforce better edges during search process. Exploration for better solutions is performed by means of crossover operator directed by the information stored in the pheromone table. The hybrid approach has been successfully implemented on three test networks. The efficacy of the algorithm has been demonstrated by presenting a comparison between results obtained using uniform crossover operator and pheromone directed crossover and also by comparing with the results published in the literature for the test systems considered.