A Modified Inertia Weight Control of Particle Swarm Optimization for Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch Problem

Appropriate determination of control variables of Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch Problem (ORPD) are essential for optimal power flow in power system. An improved inertia weight strategy of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is presented to determine the optimal control variables (both continuous and discrete) of ORPD. Inertia weight of conventional PSO is not able to provide optimum weight between local and global search phase hence, causes premature convergence and trap in local minima. In this paper an improved inertia weight strategy is adopted to avoid trapping in local minima and premature convergence of conventional PSO. The proposed approach is examined/validated on IEEE 14 and 30-bus system. The comparative analysis of obtained results depicts that proposed approach effectively reduces the active power loss by providing optimum control variables and can be employed for complex and highly dimensional problems.