ISSN: 2277-3754

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International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)
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126

Abstract Reactive power optimization (RPO) is an
important issue in the operation and control of power system. To
reduce the real power losses along the transmission lines and to
improve the voltage profile under various operating conditions,
power system operator can select a number of control variables
such as generator voltage setting, transformer tap positions and
switchable VAR sources. This paper presents Artificial Bee
Colony (ABC) based optimization technique is to handle the RPO
problem as a true multi-objective optimization problem with
competing and non-commensurable objectives. The multi-
objective of this paper is to allocate reactive power sources so
that real power loss is to be reduced and voltage profile is to be
improved, while satisfying certain system constraints. Artificial
Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is an optimization algorithm based
on the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bee swarm. I n this
algorithm, the colony of artificial bees consists of three groups of
bees: employed bees, onlookers and scouts. ABC optimization
technique is easy to implement and capable of finding out near
global optimum solution with fast convergence and efficiency.
The proposed approach is analyzed and demonstrated on the
standard I EEE-30 bus test system and simulation results show
that there is a great potential in the proposed approach to solve
the multi-objective reactive power optimization (RPO) problem.

Keywords: Reactive Power Optimization, Active Power
Loss, Artificial Bee Colony, Multi-Objective Optimization.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the past decade, the reactive power optimization
problem has got much attention for providing the secure and
economic operation of power system. Reactive power
optimization (RPO) is a sub problem of the optimal power
flow (OPF) [1] which determines the proper adjustment of
reactive power variables like generator voltage magnitudes,
transformer tap positions and setting of shunt reactive power
compensation devices to minimize the desired objective
function while satisfying certain system constraints. For an
electric operator it is quite important to provide voltage in a
specified range for the customers. In this way RPO provides
voltage control in power systems. Furthermore, it is also used
for real power loss minimization and better power
coefficients via redistribution of reactive power in the system.
Hence the reactive power optimization (RPO) problem can be
optimized to improve the voltage profile and to reduce the
system losses. To solve the reactive power optimization
(RPO) problem, several classical optimization techniques
have been proposed. These conventional optimization
techniques include the gradient method, Quadratic
programming (QP) [2], Nonlinear programming (NLP),
linear programming (LP) [3] and interior point method [4].
Although these techniques have been successfully applied to
solve the RPO problem but these are still associated with
some difficulties such as handling of the multi model
characteristic of the problems and also non differential,
nonlinear and non-convex nature of the RPO problem. These
classical techniques also suffer with the problem of local
optimum. In the recent years, global optimization techniques
based on artificial intelligence like genetic algorithm (GA)
[5], Evolutionary programming (EP) [6] and Evolutionary
strategies (ES) [7] and Particle swarm optimization (PSO)
[8] have been proposed to solve the RPO problem. These
global optimization techniques overcome the above
difficulties and do not suffer with the problem of local
optimum. If the optimization problem involves more than
one objective functions then the process of determining one
or more solutions are called multi-objective optimization.
Due to presence of conflicting multiple objectives, the
multi-objective optimization results in a number of optimal
solutions, known as Pareto- optimal solutions. Following two
goals are very important in multi-objective optimization:
1. To find a set of solutions as close as possible to the
Pareto-optimal front.
2. To find a set of solutions as diverse as possible.
This paper presents ABC algorithm based on the intelligent
foraging behavior of honey bee swarm for solving
multi-objective reactive power optimization (RPO) problem.
The multi-objective RPO problem is formulated as a
nonlinear constrained multi-objective optimization problem
with two competing objectives i.e. active power loss (P
LOSS
)
and voltage deviations (VD). Moreover, fuzzy set theory is
employed to extract the best compromise solution over the
trade-off curve.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
The objective of the RPO problem is to identify reactive
power control variables which minimize the objective
functions. Here the RPO problem is treated as a single
objective optimization problem by linear combination of two
objective functions i.e. P
LOSS
and VD which can be written as
follows:

Where w is a weighting factor and varying as a random
number w= rand [0, 1].

Multi-Objective Reactive Power Optimization
Using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm
Bhagat Singh Prajapati, Laxmi Srivastava



ISSN: 2277-3754
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127
A. Minimization Of Real Power Loss:
The minimization of system real power loss P
LOSS
can be
mathematically stated as:

Where nl is the number of transmission lines,

is the
conductance of the k
th
line, and are the voltage
magnitude at the end buses i and j of k
th
line respectively and
is the voltage phase angle at the end buses i and j.
B. Voltage Profile Improvement:
Bus voltage is one of the most important security and service
quality indices. Voltage profile can be improved by
minimizing the deviations between the nominal and load bus
voltages. The objective function can be expressed as:

Where NL is the number of load buses; is the
prescribed reference value of the voltage magnitude at the i
th

load bus. is usually taken as 1.0 p.u..
The minimization problem is subjected to the following
equality and inequality constraints.
C. Equality Constraints:



where N
B
is the number of buses, P
G
is the active power
generated, Q
G
is the reactive power generated, P
D
is the load
active power , Q
D
is the load reactive power, and are
the transfer conductance and susceptance between bus i and
bus j respectively.
D. Inequality Constraints:
(a) Generation constraints: Generator voltages V
G
and
reactive power outputs Q
G
are restricted by their upper
and lower bounds as follows:





Where NG

is number of generators.
(b) Switchable VAR sources constraints: Reactive power
generation limit of capacitor banks are as follows:

(8)
Where NC is the number of switchable VAR sources
(c) Transformer constraints: Transformer tap setting limit
are given as follows:


Where NT is the number of transformers.
(d) Security constraints: These include the constraints of
voltages at load buses and transmission line loading as
follows:


Aggregating the objectives and constraints, the problem
can be mathematically as a nonlinear constrained
multi-objective optimization problem as follows:
Minimize [P
LOSS
(x, u), VD(x, u)] (12)
Subject to: g(x, u) = 0 (13)
h(x, u) 0 (14)
Where
x is the vector of dependent variables consisting of load bus
voltage V
L
, generator reactive power outputs Q
G
, and
transmission line loadings S
l
. Therefore, x can be expressed
as follows:

u is the vector of control variables consisting of generator
voltage V
G
, transformer tap settings t
k
and shunt VAR
compensations Q
C
. Therefore, u can be expressed as follows:
(16)
g is equality constraints and h is inequality constraints.
III. MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION
Most of the real world problems are associated with
simultaneous optimization of several objective functions
[16]. Generally, these objective functions are
non-commensurable and conflicting in nature. The
conflicting natures of these objective functions give rise to a
set of optimal solutions, instead of one optimal solution. The
reason for the optimality of many solutions is that there is no
one can be better than any other with respect to all objective
functions. These optimal solutions are called Pareto- optimal
solutions.
Generally, multi-objective optimization problem consists
of number of objectives simultaneously and is associated with
a number of equality and inequality constraints which can be
formulated as follows:

Where the i
th
objective functions, x is a decision vector that
represents a solution, and is the number of objectives.
Subject to constraints:

For a multi-objective optimization problem, any two
solutions x
1
and x
2
may have one of the two possibilities:
either one dominates other or none dominates other. For the
problem of minimization a solution x
1
dominates x
2
if the
following two conditions are satisfied:





ISSN: 2277-3754
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International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)
Volume 2, Issue 1, July 2012


128
If any of the above conditions is violated, the solution x
1
does
not dominate the dominate x
2
. If x
1
dominates the solution x
2
,
x
1
is called non-dominated solution. Non- dominant
solutions within the entire search space are also known as
Pareto-optimal solutions which constitute the Pareto-optimal
set or Pareto-optimal front.
IV. BEST COMPROMISE SOLUTION
With the help of Pareto optimal set of non-dominated
solution, the decision maker can get a single best
compromise solution presented by the proposed approach.
Due to imprecise nature of decision makers judgment, a
membership function
i
represents the i
th
objective function
F
i
as follows:

Where and are the minimum and maximum
value of the i
th
objective function among all non-dominated
solutions, respectively.
For each non-dominated solution k, the normalized
membership function
k
is calculated as follows:

Where M is the number of non-dominated solutions. The best
compromise solution is that have the maximum value of
k
.
V. ARTIFICIAL BEE COLONY ALGORITHM
In computer science and operations research, the Artificial
Bee Colony algorithm is a population based search algorithm
first proposed by D. Karaboga in 2005.It mimics the food
foraging behavior of swarms of honey bees. In its basic
version, the algorithm performs a kind of neighborhood
search combined with random search and can be used for
both combinatorial optimization and functional
optimization.ABC is developed based on inspecting the
behaviors of real bees on finding nectar and sharing the
information of food sources to the bees in the hive.
In ABC algorithm, the colony of artificial bees consists of
three groups of bees: employed bees, onlooker bees and
scouts. The employed bees stay on a food source and provide
the neighborhood of the source in its memory. Onlooker bees
get the information of food sources from the employed bees in
the hive and select one of the food sources to gather the
nectar. Scouts are responsible to find new food source
depending on an internal motivation or possible external
clues or andomly [9].
Main steps of the algorithm are given below:
1. Initialize the food source position.
2. Each employed bee produces a new food source in her food
source site and exploits the better source.

3. Each onlooker bee selects a source depending on the
quality of her solution, produces a new food source site and
exploits the better source.
4. Determine the source to be abandoned and allocate its
employed bee as scout for searching new food sources.
5. Memorize the best food source found so far.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 until the stopping criterion is met.
Fig1. Flow Chart of ABC Algorithm (Karaboga and
Basturk, 2007) [11]
A. Calculation of the New Position
In the first step of algorithm, random solutions are
produced in the specified range of variables
i
(i = 1,
2..S), where S is the number of food sources.
Secondly, for each employed bee, whose total amounts are
equal to the half of the total food sources, a new source is
produced by the equation (23):

where x
i
= The position of the onlooker bee, t = The iteration
number,
k
= The randomly chosen employed bee [k = int
(rand*S)+1], j = 1D ( D is the dimension of the
solution) and ()=A series of random variable in the range
[-1,1].
B. Probability of Selecting a Nectar Source
After creating x
i
, this new solution is compared with
i

solution and best one is used as the source. In the third step of
the algorithm onlooker bees choose a food source whose
probability is given by the equation (24):




ISSN: 2277-3754
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International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)
Volume 2, Issue 1, July 2012


129
Where P
i
= The probability of selecting the i
th
employed bee,
S= The number of employed bees,
i
= The position of the i
th

employed bee and F (
i
) = The fitness value.
C. The Movement of the Scout Bees
The employed bee whose food source has been abandoned
becomes a scout and is responsible for random searches in
each colony. The selection of scout among the employed bees
is realized with respect to the limit parameter. A new source
of scout can be determined by the equation (25):

where
r is a random number and r [0, 1].
VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The proposed ABC algorithm has been analyzed and
demonstrated on IEEE-30 bus test system consisting of six
generating units as shown in Figure2 [12]. The system data is
given in Table 2 and Table 3 [21]. This system has 19-control
variable as follows: 6-generator voltage magnitudes,
4-transformer tap settings and 9-switchable VAR sources.
The minimum and maximum limits for the control variables
along with the initial settings are given in the Table 1.
















Fig 2. Single Line Diagram of IEEE 30-Bus Test System
To demonstrate the effectiveness of ABC algorithm for
solving RPO problem following parameters are selected:
Colony dimension =10; limit parameter=130; maximum
number of cycle=300; number of control variables=19.
Multi-objective optimization with Pareto frontier
Here multi-objective optimization RPO problem is
treated as a single objective optimization problem by linear
combination of two objective functions i.e. real power loss
(P
LOSS
) and voltage deviation (VD). These objective
functions are optimized simultaneously with the proposed
ABC algorithm. The diversity of the Pareto optimal set with
12 non-dominated solutions over the trade-off curve is shown
in the Figure3. With the help of equations (21) and (22), the
membership functions of each member of Pareto-optimal set
have been evaluated and the best compromise solution
having the maximum value of membership function has been
extracted.
Table 1: The Minimum and Maximum Limits For the Control
Variables Along With the Initial Settings and Optimal Settings
of Control Variables for Best Compromise Solution




ISSN: 2277-3754
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International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)
Volume 2, Issue 1, July 2012


130
Table 2: Bus data

Table 3: Line data


Table 4: 12 Non-Dominated Solutions and Best Compromise
Solution

By applying this procedure, the best compromise
solution with optimal setting of control variables is shown in
the fifth column of Table 1. From the Table 4 and
Pareto-optimal front of proposed approach it is clear that best
compromise solution is obtained at weighing factor w=0.575
and at this weighing factor real power loss and voltage
deviations are 5.07564 MW and 0.25791 p.u. respectively. As
compared with the base case real power loss and voltage
deviations are reduced up to 13.12% and 77.77%
respectively.


Fig 3. Pareto-Optimal Front for the Proposed ABC Approach

VII. CONCLUSION
To solve the multi-objective Reactive Power Optimization
(RPO) problem; Artificial Bee Colony algorithm has been
proposed, developed and effectively applied in this paper.
Here the multi-objective RPO problem has been considered
as a constrained single objective optimization problem by
linear combination of two objective functions (real power
loss and voltage deviations). For extracting best compromise
solution over the trade off curve that exists between
competing objectives, a fuzzy based mechanism is also
employed. The proposed approach is analyzed and
demonstrated on the standard IEEE-30 bus test system. The
simulation results obtained by proposed approach show its
robustness and effectiveness to solve the multi-objective
Reactive Power Optimization (RPO) problem.




ISSN: 2277-3754
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International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)
Volume 2, Issue 1, July 2012


131
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are thankful to director of Madhav Institute of
Technology and Science, Gwalior for providing support and
facilities to carry out this research work.

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