A parallel tabu search based method for reconfigurations of distribution systems

This paper presents an efficient meta-heuristic method for reconfigurations of distribution systems. In this paper, parallel tabu search is used to reconfigure distribution systems so that active power losses are globally minimized with turning on/off sectionalizing switches. The loss minimization problem is one of the most important problems to save the operational cost in distribution systems. As a result, more efficient approaches are required to handle a combinatorial problem. This paper focuses on tabu search (TS) that introduces the adaptive memory called tabu list into the hill-climbing method of local search to escape from local minima. This paper proposes parallel tabu search to reduce computational effort and enhance solution accuracy. A couple of strategies are introduced into TS. One is to decompose the solution neighborhood of TS into the subneighborhood. The other is to consider different tabu lengths that make the solution more diverse. The proposed method is successfully applied to sample systems