Chemical Reaction Optimization for the Optimal Power Flow Problem

This paper presents an implementation of the Chemical Reaction Optimization (CRO) algorithm to solve the optimal power flow (OPF) problem in power systems with the objective of minimizing generation costs. Multiple constraints, such as the balance of the power, bus voltage magnitude limits, transmission line flow limits, transformer tap settings, etc., are considered. We adapt the CRO framework to the OPF problem by redesigning the elementary reaction operators. We perform simulations on the standard IEEE-14, -30, and -57 bus benchmark systems. We compare the perform of CRO with other reported evolutionary algorithms in the IEEE-30 test case. Simulation results show that CRO can obtain a solution with the lowest cost, when compared with other algorithms. To be more complete, we also give the average result for the IEEE-30 case, and the best and average results for the IEEE-14 and -57 test cases. The results given in this paper suggest that CRO is a better alternative for solving the OPF problem, as well as its variants for the future smart grid.