Reconfiguration of electrical networks by an Ant Colony Optimization algorithm

Electricity distribution companies constantly require improvements in service, and an appropriate reduction in costs of the system. Finding the optimal configuration of the distribution network reduces power losses, which impacts directly on costs, also leading to significant energy savings. Over recent decades, the problem of network reconfiguration for loss minimization and for other purposes has been widely studied. The algorithms improve the previously obtained minimum power loss and also reduce computational times. This paper proposes the study and application of an algorithm based on Ant Colony Optimization, method covered in the paradigm of Swarm Intelligence, sub-discipline of Computational Intelligence. We show an easy network codification and we performed a detailed study of the ranges of values for the configuration parameters of the algorithm. We achieved the optimal result for testing networks and we found appropriate configurations for more complex networks, taking low computational times.