Dispersed Generation Planning Using A New

Evolutionary Approach

Ahmed R. Abdelaziz, IEEE Senior Member Walid M. Ali, IEEE Student Member
alaziz82@hotmail.com alexnavigator@hotmail.com
Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt

Abstract: This paper presents a new approach to dispersed generation
planning based on Genetic Algorithm in a sub-transmission system.
Dispersed generations could be photovoltaic cells, wind generation,
battery storage, fuel cell, etc. A method to optimally locate such
generation in a meshed network for maximizing the potential benefits
is outlined using Genetic Algorithm and its improvement in this
paper. The benefit expressed as a performance index is minimization
of losses. The proposed method was tested for several sample power
systems with 6, 14 and 30 bus types. Also, to show its effectiveness,
the results of suggested algorithm are compared with those of
classical genetic algorithm.


I. INTRODUCTION

The concept of a distributed utility is installation of smaller
modular resources in a distributed manner closer to the point
of end use. Dispersed generations could be photovoltaic cells,
wind generation, battery storage, fuel cell, etc. Such locally
distributed generation has several merits from the viewpoint of
environmental restriction and location limitations, as well as
transient and voltage stability in the power systems [1].
The objective of this paper is to offer the solution for
minimized network power loss by optimally locating the
dispersed generation under the constraint of the total injection
of installed dispersed generation. This process is somewhat
similar to the Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problem. These
OPF problems have been solved by second order method,
which is a practical application of the Newton method [2]-[4].
This method, however, can hardly search global optimum and
is easily trapped in local optima about optimal distribution of
the dispersed generation problem.
This problem has severe non-linearity due to the physical
constraints such as balance between power supply and
demand, limitation for the total dispersed generation injection
capacity and so on. Also as the system for the analysis
becomes larger, more memory is required for these methods.
In these problems, existing Genetic Algorithm (SGA: Simple
Genetic Algorithm) can achieve global optimum through the
directional irregular searching but has several drawbacks such
as excessive convergence time and premature convergence.
High selective pressure for better convergence brings about an
increasing diversity loss rate in population and premature
convergence is owing to high diversity loss rate [5]-[6].
In this paper, to overcome the defects of existing SGA, a new
Evolutionary Approach (EA) is applied to solve the optimal
distribution of dispersed generation problem. EA originated
from using the concept of sexual differentiation and a
particular type of selective breeding in choosing parents for
each generation of the genetic population, EA tried to reduce
diversity loss rate and increase robustness of SGA. In this
paper, we make convergence time and stability better by
improving the operators of the original SGA.

Proposed operators are two point mutation and new crossover
which is a combination of heuristic and arithmetical
crossovers. The EA with those new operators was tested on
the IEEE test systems, and could search better solutions than
those traced by SGA.


II. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION OF DISPERSED
GENERATION PLANNING

Dispersed generation planning deals with how to allocate the
dispersed generation optimally in order to obtain maximum
benefits by minimizing the loss of total real power in the
system. For the loss minimization, the performance index is
given by

=
=
n
1 i
i
P f min (1)
Where
P
i
= nodal injection of power at bus i
n = total number of buses.

In the case of total injection of dispersed generation is fixed by
C MW, this equality constraint is expressed as a penalty
function,
) C P ... P ( P f min
k j
n
1 i
i
+ + + =

=
(2)
Where
C = total injection of dispersed generations [MW]
= penalty weight of equality constraint
j,, k = numbers of voltage controlled bus.

A. Mathematical Formulation in Simple Genetic Algorithm

In this paper, the genes of genetic algorithm are represented by
injections of dispersed generation and central power station at
all buses, and the fitness function is given in (3),
2 2
1
2
) ... .( ) ( ) , ( C P P t E P P f Min
k j
n
i
i
+ + + + =

=
(3)
where
= penalty weight.
t = number of generations in SGA.
0-7803-7967-5/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE
Paper accepted for presentation at 2003 IEEE Bologna Power Tech Conference, June 23th-26th, Bologna, Italy
Operating power factor of the dispersed generation is assumed
to be 1.0 in this study and therefore, dispersed generation
injection is only real power,
From (3), slack bus injection power P
1
is a dependent variable
of other bus voltage magnitudes |E| and angles , and
therefore, it can be obtained by existing power flow solution.
The second-order term of penalty weight in (3) is able to
prevent a candidate string for optimal solution from being
eliminated when it violates the constraint in the early
generation stage.


III. A NEW EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH (EA)

Generally, GAs abilities to find a correct solution in a variety
of problems, to preserve diversity for preventing premature
convergence and to improve convergence time are much
affected by parent selection algorithm for generating offspring.
Sexual differentiation and sexual selective breeding are the
attributes of almost all the real life for preservation and
evolution of the species, but have been rarely used in most
conventional GA applications. Sexual selection is the scheme
that employs sexual differentiation and sexual selection
algorithm outperformed roulette wheel and tournament
selection algorithm in terms of accuracy, preserving diversity
and fast convergence. EA uses sexual differentiation and
selective breeding in choosing parents for genetic strings, and
in this scheme, diversity loss rate can be directly affected by
controlling Male-to-Female Ratio. The diversity loss rate is:
n
f m
1 L
+
= (4)
where
m = the number of selected males
f = the number of selected females
n = number of individual,
In that case, diversity remain rate D will be:
t
) L 1 ( D = (5)
where
t = generation number.
EAs flowchart is given in Fig. 1. From selection procedure in
Fig. 1, the parents string classified as a male is removed from
the population, since it should not be subsequently classified
as a female. In a mating process, on the first stage, all the m
males are mated with the selected female with regarding to the
order of fitness, but on the last, only the first male is mated.
Selected string as breeding female can get pregnant only once
and 0, in order not to be selected again, replaces fitness. SGA
uses basic one or two-point crossover and the frequency of
mutation is very low for stable convergence. In our
modification, new crossover and mutation is suggested, next
section will show that.


IV. EAS OPERATORS

The convergence characteristic of new EA is much affected by
its operators and especially, crossover method is much more
important than mutation. The procedure of heuristic crossover
is as follows;
i) For crossover, choose the better one of two parents
selected randomly,
ii) A new offspring will be determined at the point far from
the better parent with the searching step length, which is
a product of distance between two parents and a uniform
random number.
However, heuristic crossover may not produce offspring when
two parents are so far away from each other in searching space
and optimal point is lying between them. Therefore, this paper
proposes a new algorithm combining heuristic and
arithmetical crossover, which is able to generate offspring
existing between parents in searching space. In this
combination method, if heuristic crossover does not generate
the offspring, which has better fitness than worse parents and
still lying in the searching space after the k
th
trial, then
arithmetical crossover is executed (see Fig. 2). This method
relieves heuristic crossover method of its weak point, which is
hardly generating good offspring when selected parents are far
from each other and optimum value is between them.
In the mutation operator case, its role is to give new gene to
the population so that the total number of strings should be
reduced, and therefore, it helps EA to search global optimum
solution. Especially when using non-uniform mutation, we
have better convergence performance. However, these
mutation methods may bring about violation of several
constraints and deterioration of convergence performance.
To solve those defects, two-point mutation is proposed in this
paper, which picks up mutation and correction genes at the
same time. When one gene is mutated in a string, another gene
is selected and modified in the same string to prevent violation
of constraints. Two-point mutation method is able to reduce
the additional delay of convergence when the mutated swing
violates constraints.


V. CASE STUDIES

IEEE 6-bus system, shown in Fig. 3, was analyzed by SGA,
and EA by using proposed new genetic operators. In this
system, nodes 1 and 5 can be considered as constant voltage
buses, which are connected to the central power station. On
the other hand, nodes 2, 3, 4 and 6 are load buses on which
active and reactive powers are specified and dispersed
generation could be injected at these nodes.
Table I shows the results of SGA and EA on the 6-bus
network. EA is better than others at all the average values of
losses and these results show the need of introducing sexual
differentiation and sexual selective breeding to SGA. The
proposed crossover and two-point mutation in EA is superior
to any other methods.
Table II shows the results of 6-bus simulation by EA. This
summarizes the distributed injections at each bus for 5
different total injections and power losses in the system. In
this table, total injection 0 MW represents the case before the
dispersed generation is installed.





























START



Generate initial population.
(population size=n)




Evaluate fitness



The m fittest strings are identified as the breeding males



Selected strings as breeding males are effectively removed
from population.





Calculate the relative fitness of each string




One female string is selected to breed by
roulette wheel selection




Set the selected female strings fitness as 0.




Selected female is mated with a selected male from the list of
males and performs crossover of those.




No
Total number of
generated offspring =n?



Yes


Perform mutation
process.



The children replace the
parents.



Maximum
generation?
No


Yes


END



Fig.1. Flowchart of The Proposed Evolutionary Algorithm






n=1



Yes k>=n
Heuristic crossover


No




Can offspring be in
the search space?
n=n+1

No

Arithmetical crossover

Yes



Offsprings
fitness>=worse parents
fitness


No




Yes



Fig.2. Flowchart for the Proposed Crossover

Fig. 3. Base Case of the Network Studied


TABLE I: COMPARISON OF SGA AND EA
Average Looses (MW) Total
Injection
(MW)
SGA EA
0.0 0.4555 0.4555
0.5 0.41610 0.41605
1.0 0.39514 0.39507
5.0 0.24066 0.24960
10.0 0.12149 0.12141
15.0 0.04987 0.04931

The same studies are expanded to the 14-bus network having
259 MW power demand and 30-bus network having
283.4MW.

Table III shows the results of SGA and EA on the 14-bus
network. The values from EA are summarized and compared
with SGA for each case, and this table also shows the
reduction of losses in percent by EA from SGA.
8.0 5+j1.5 5+j1.25
1.006 8.187
6 5

Table IV also shows the results of simulation in 30-bus
network by using EA and SGA. From Tables 3 and 4, it can be
seen that EA with the proposed operators is superior to SGA
in all the cases, especially in severe constrained case.
1.198
4.037
3.022
Loss=0.455477 MW

2 3 1

TABLE II: SIMULATION RESULTS FROM EA
Injections at buses (MW)
Total
Injection
(MW) 2 3 4 6
Losses
(MW)
0.0 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.4555
0.5 0.063 0.187 0.187 0.062 0.4161
1.0 0.125 0.375 0.374 0.125 0.3951
5.0 0.762 1.875 1.738 0.625 0.2496
10.0 2.000 3.750 3.000 1.250 0.1214
15.0 3.233 5.625 4.247 1.895 0.0493


TABLE III: COMPARISON OF SGA AND EA FOR 14-BUS TEST CASE
Losses (MW) Total
Injection
(MW)
SGA EA
Reduction of losses (%)
0.0 4.7714 - -
13.0 1.4401 1.3798 4.19
26.0 1.2882 1.1450 11.12
64.7 0.7163 0.6901 3.66

TABLE IV: COMPARISON OF SGA AND EA FOR 30-BUS TEST CASE
13.706 4+j1
4.299 8.47
7.25+j2
Losses (MW) Total
Injection
(MW)
SGA EA
Reduction of losses (%)
0.0 4.7305 - -
14.0 2.5731 2.3441 8.9
28.3 2.1015 1.9106 9.08
71.0 1.3273 1.2554 5.42


VI. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, SGA and EA are introduced to search optimal
distribution of dispersed generation, and improved genetic
operators such as Heuristic and Arithmetic crossover operator
and two-point mutation operator with non-uniform mutation
are proposed for obtaining the fast convergence and
preventing genetic algorithms from premature convergence.
From the various test results, it can be seen that improved
genetic operators indicate superior performance over the
conventional ones. This ability to search better optimum
solutions indicates a promise of the EA for other optimization
problems in the power systems.


REFERENCES

For a paper citation:

[1] R. Billinton, and R. Allan, Probabilistic Assessment of Power
System, Proceedings of IEEE, vol. 8, pp. 140-162, Jan. 2000.
[2] N. S. Rau, Y H Wan, Optimum Location of Resources in Distributed
Planning, IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, vol. 9, no.4, pp. 653-659,
Nov. 1994.
[3] L. Naihu, X. Yan, and H. Chen, FACTS-based Power Flow Control in
Interconnected Power System, IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, vol.
15, no. 1, pp. 257-262, Feb. 2000.
[4] A. J. Conejo, F. D. Galiana, and I. Kockar, Z-bus Loss Allocation,
IEEE Trans. Power Systems, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 105-110, Feb. 2001.






























For a book citation:

[5] R. E. King, Computational Intelligence in Control Engineering,
Marcel Dekker, Inc., pp. 211-221, 1999.
[6] Z. Michalewicz, Genetic algorithms + data structures = evolution
programs, Springer, Berlin, 1999.


BIOGRAPHIES


Dr. Ahmed R. Abdelaziz, (SM98) received his
B. Sc., M. Sc., and Ph.D. in Electrical
Engineering all from University of Alexandria.
From 1984-92 he worked as teaching assistant at
University of Alexandria. From 1992-96, he was
an assistant professor at the Department of
Electrical Engineering of University of
Alexandria. During the academic year 1996-97,
he is a visiting professor at the Electrical
Engineering Department of University of
Massachusetts- Lowell, USA.
Currently, he is an associate professor at the
Electrical Engineering Department of UA. He is
a senior member of IEEE. He has numerous
papers in power system reliability, planning, and
renewable energy systems


Eng. Walid M Aly, received his B. Sc (1996) in
Electrical Engineering and M. Sc. (2001) in
power system planning all from the University of
Alexandria.
Currently he works as JAVA Instructor at Allied
Consultant, Egypt.
He is currently working toward his Ph.D. degree
at Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt.
His research interests are the applications of
modern Artificial Intelligent Techniques (GA,
GP, TS and SA) in solving electrical problems,
power system planning, and system
identifications.