A particle swarm optimization for reactive power and voltage control in electric power systems

This paper presents a particle swarm optimization (PSO) for reactive power and voltage control (RPVC) in electric power systems. RPVC can be formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problem (MINLP). The proposed method expands the original PSO to handle a MINLP and determines an RPVC strategy with continuous and discrete control variables such as automatic voltage regulator (AVR) operating values of generators, tap positions of on-load tap changer (OLTC) of transformers, and the amount of reactive power compensation equipment (RPCE). The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated and compared with reactive tabu search (RTS) and the enumeration method on practical power system models with promising results.