A new colliding bodies optimization for solving
optimal power flow problem in power system
*Harish Pulluri1, R. Naresh2, Veena Sharma3, Preeti4
Electrical Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur, India
Email: (*1harishpulluri, 2rnareshnith, 3veenanaresh, 4preetieednith) @gmail.com
Abstract In the present article, a new heuristic algorithm
colliding bodies optimization (CBO) is applied to solve optimal
power flow (OPF) problem in an electrical power system. CBO is
simple in structure and does not have any control parameters.
Recently, the CBO is applied on different mathematical and
structural problems owing to its appreciable efficacy other than
the several existing algorithms. The performance and efficiency
of the proposed CBO method are demonstrated on IEEE 30-bus
system with different objective functions. Results obtained with
the proposed CBO method is compared with other methods
present in the recent literature. From these results, it can be
concluded that the CBO algorithm provides better solutions for
different OPF problems.
Keywords colliding bodies optimization; heuristic algorithm;
optimal power flow.
I. INTRODUCTION
Optimal power flow (OPF) is one of the important tools for
power system planning and operation control. Dommel and
Tinney first defined OPF in 1960. After that, this problem has
drawn considerable attention of many researchers. The main
aim of OPF is to minimize the given objective function by
adjusting the some of the independent variables to satisfy the
set of various diverse constraints related to the power system
network. The independent variables include generator buses,
real power outputs except slack bus, generator buses voltage
magnitudes, shunt var compensators, and transformer taps
connected between various buses. The equality constraints are
the nonlinear power flow equations, and inequality constraints
of the power system that include load buses voltage
magnitudes, the line flows, slack bus active power output, and
generator reactive power limits [1]. Minimization of total fuel
cost is the most commonly considered objective function. To
improve the reserve capacity minimization of transmission loss
is considered as a part of the OPF problem. Moreover, due to
ever increase in the electricity demand with unequal generation
and transmission capacity expansion, voltage instability
evolving a new challenge for power system operation and
control. In some cases due to lack of reactive power sources,
the voltages of the heavily loaded buses may be less than the
normal operating limits which lead to voltage collapse in the
network. In such cases, voltage profile improvement and
voltage stability enhancement are considered as objectives of
the OPF problem.
The literature on OPF is considerably high. Various
conventional methods [2, 3] have been successfully applied to
finding the solution of OPF problem. But, these all these
techniques are generally based on differentiation and easily
trapped in local optimum solution or may divergent also.
978-1-5090-0128-6/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE
Therefore, evolutionary algorithms are developed to alleviate
the drawbacks in conventional methods and to provide near
optimal solution such as, genetic algorithm (GA) [4],
differential evolution (DE) [5], artificial bee colony (ABC)
[6], particle swarm optimization (PSO) [7], biogeography
based optimization (BBO) [8], black hole based optimization
(BHBO) [9], and league championship algorithm [10].
Recently, CBO [11] is a newly proposed heuristic
technique developed by Kaveh and Mahdavi. It is a multi-agent
algorithm inspired from the natural phenomenon of one-
dimensional collision between two objective bodies. In which
every object is modeled, as a colliding body (CB) with
predefined velocity and mass. A collision between any two pair
of objects and its new positions are updated with new velocities
based on the collision laws. The key feature of CBO is that
does not have any tuning variables and simple in structure. The
CBO algorithm is tested on various practical world
optimization problems [12,13] and the results are proven that
the CBO is more effective and superior to solve the
optimization problems. In the present article, CBO is applied to
solve the OPF problems of IEEE 30-bus system with different
objective functions.
The rest of the paper is arranged as below: Section II
describes the OPF problem formulation. Section III discusses a
brief introduction of collision laws and proposed CBO method
to solve OPF problems. Section IV explains the simulation
results of different objective functions and finally, conclusions
are given in Section V.
II. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION
In general, the goal of OPF problem is to minimize a
chosen objective function while satisfying a set of equality and
inequality constraints by adjusting the some of control
variables. Mathematically, it is described as below:
min f ( x, u ) (1)
g ( x, u ) = 0
subjected to (2)
h( x, u ) 0
where f is an objective function to be optimized; x is
vector of state variables containing slack bus active power
output ( Pg1 ), load buses voltage magnitudes ( Vl ), MVA flows
in transmission lines ( Sl ) and reactive power of generator
buses ( Qg ), and mathematically formulated as follows:
x = Pg1 , Vl1 Vlnl , Sl1 Slntl , Qg1 Qgng (3)
 where ng , nl , and ntl represents the number of ng

generators, transmission lines and load buses respectively. H km mV

Lk = 1 m =1 where m = 1, 2, , ng (9)
u is vector of independent variables comprising of Vk
generators real power output except slack bus, generator buses
voltage magnitudes ( Vg ), shunt var compensators ( bsh ), and
transformer tap settings connected between various buses ( t ). H km = [inv(Ykk )] * [Ykm ] (10)
u can be expressed as follows:
where Lk is VSI value of the k th load bus, Ykk is self-
u = Pg2 , , Pgng , Vg1 , , Vgng , t1 , , tnt , b sh1 , b shnc (4) admittance of k th load bus, Ykm is mutual admittance between

where nt , and nc represents the number of transformer k th and mth buses.

taps shunt var compensators respectively.
B. Constraints
In this study, various objective functions are adopted to
show the effectiveness of the CBO approach, which can be The equality constraints g ( x, u ) are nonlinear power flow
expressed as follows: equations, which are expressed as below:
nb

A. Objective Functions Pgk Pdk Vk Vm ( Gkm cos km + Bkm sin km ) = 0 (11)

m =1
1) Minimization of total fuel cost (TFC): The objective is
to minimize the TFC of all the thermal generators in a power nl

system, it is expressed as follows: Qgk Qdk Vk Vm ( Gkm sin km Bkm cos km ) = 0 (12)
m =1
ng
min f1 = ( ak + bk Pgk + ck pgk
2
) (5) where Pgk , Qgk are active and reactive power generations
k =1
of the k th generator respectively; Pdk , Qdk are active and
where f1 is the total fuel cost of all the generators, reactive power demands of k th bus respectively; Vk , Vm are
th
ak , bk , c k represent the cost coefficients of the k voltage magnitudes of k th and mth buses respectively;
th
generator. Pgk is the active power generation at k generator. Gkm , Bkm are conductance and susceptance between k th and

2) Voltage profile improvement: The aim decreases the mth buses respectively.
sum of voltae deviation of all the load buses from reference The inequality constraints h( x, u ) are defined within their
voltage.
prescribed limits, which are expressed as follows:
nl
min f 2 = (Vk Vref ) (6) Pgkmin Pgk Pgkmax
k =1 min
Vgk Vgk Vgk
max
k = 1, 2, , ng (13)
where f 2 is the sum of voltage deviation of all the load min max
Qgk Qgk Qgk
buses; Vk represents the voltage magnitude of the k th bus;
tkmin tk tkmax k = 1, 2, , nt (14)
and Vref =1 p.u. min max
b shk bsh b shk k = 1, 2, , nc (15)
3) Minimization of active power loss: Mathematically, V min
Vlk V max
k = 1, 2, , nl (16)
lk lk
active power loss is expressed as given below:
max
Slk S lk k = 1, 2, , ntl (17)
ntl
min f 3 = Gn (Vk2 + Vm2 2VkVm cos km ) (7)
n =1
where, Pgkmin , Pgkmax are the minimum and maximum active

where f 3 is the active power loss of all transmission lines,
Gn is conductance of nth transmission line, Vk , Vm are voltage
magnitudes of k th and mth buses respectively, km is phase
angle between k th and mth buses.
4) Voltage stability enhancement: Mathematically voltage
stability index (VSI) is expressed as below:
min f 3 = min(max( Lk ))
power limits of the k th generating unit respectively; Vgkmin ,
Vgkmax are minimum and maximum voltage limits of the k th
generator bus respectively; Vgk is voltage magnitude of k th
generator bus; tkmin , tkmax are minimum and maximum tap
settings of k th transformer respectively; tk is tap setting of
the k th transformer tap; bshk min max
, bshk are minimum and
th
(8) maximum susceptance limits of k shunt var compensator
respectively; bshk is susceptance value of k th shunt capacitor;
Vlkmin , Vlkmax are minimum and maximum voltage limits of k th
load bus respectively; Vlk is voltage magnitude of k th load
bus; and Slkmax , Slk are maximum MVA flow and MVA flow
in k th transmission line respectively.
III. COLLIDING BODIES OPTIMIZATION
A. Laws of Momentum and Energy
Laws of energy and momentum govern the impact
between the positions of the two objects. When an impact
happens in an isolated power system, the positions of the
objects before and after impact are shown in Fig. 1. During
this process, the momentum of the objects is preserved. The
momentum of all the objects before and after impact are equal
if there is no external force acting upon these objects and can
be expressed as follows:
m1v1 + m2 v2 = m1v '1 + m2 v '2
Similarly, the total kinetic energy before and after the
collision is expressed as follows:
1 1 1 1
m1v12 + m2 v22 = m1v '12 + m2 v '22 + P
2 2 2 2
where m1 and m2 are masses of the two objectives
respectively, v1 , v2 , v '1 & v '2 are velocities of the two objects
before and after impact respectively. P is the loss of kinetic
energy. The final velocities v '1 , v '2 of the two objectives after
the impact are defined as follows;
( m1 m2 ) v1 + ( m2 + m2 ) v2
v '1 =
m1 + m2
( m2 m1 ) v2 + ( m1 + m1 ) v1
v '2 =
m1 + m2
where is the coefficient of restitution (COR) of the
colliding objects, it is defined as the ratio of relative velocities
of two objects after impact to before impact.
Fig. 1. The principle of collision between to objective bodies (a) before
impact (b) after impact.
v12 v11
= (22)
v2 v1
Two different cases are occurred depending upon the value
of COR ( ) for each impact as described below:
1) Perfect Elastic Collision: Here, there is no loss of
energy when impact occurs between two objects. Therefore,
the coefficient of restitution is considered as equal to one
( =1) and final velocities are very high after impact
happened.
2) Inelastic Collision: Here, there is loss of energy (some
amount of energy is converted into other forms of energy)
when impact occurs between two objects. Therefore, the
coefficient of restitution is considered as less than one ( <1)
and the final velocities are low after collision occurred.
(18)
B. Detailed Description of CBO Algorithm for solving OPF
Step 1: Each colliding body, which represents the complete
solution set comprising of generator buses active real power
outputs, generator buses voltage magnitudes, tap settings of
(19) the transformer connected between various buses and reactive
power of the shunt var compensators are generated randomly
within their limits, which represent the CB positions. Thus, the
k th CB that is expressed as follows:
X k = Pgk ,2 , , Pgk , ng , Vgk ,1 , , Vgk , ng ,
(23)
tk ,1 , , tk , nt , bshk ,1 , b shk , nc
The complete search space for CBO algorithm having
(20) population NP is expressed as follows:
X = [ X 1 , , X k , , X NP ]
T
(24)
Step 2: Calculate the fitness value of each CB as follows
[7].
(21)
F = fi + wP (|PG1 -PG1lim |) + wV (| VL VLlim |) +
2 2
(25)
wQ (| QG QGlim |) + wS (| Sl Sllim |)
2 2
where, f i is the i th objective function, i = 1, 2, 3, 4 ,
wP , wQ , wV and wS are penalty coefficients of the respective
constraints. These values are to be selected high in order to
reject the infeasible strings during the iteration process.
Step 3: The body mass of each CB is calculated as.
1
F (k )
mk = (26)
N
1
m =1 F ( m)
where, F ( k ) is the fitness value of the k th CB.
Step 4: Sort all the CBs in ascending order according to
their mass values. These sorted values are divided equally into
two parts (Fig. 2). (i) Stationary group (ii) moving group. The
velocity of the stationary and moving objects before the
collision is expressed as follows:
 Step 7: If any control variable is violating its minimum
limit made equal to its minimum limit and any variable
violates it maximum limit made equal to its maximum limit.
When the maximum number of iterations is reached, then stop
the procedure and print the optimum solution from the last
iteration. Otherwise, go to step 2.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

To demonstrate the feasibility and validity of CBO
algorithm, IEEE 30-bus system with various objective
functions are considered. The complete work was done on a
2.2 GHz CPU, i3 core processor and program code is written
in MATLAB 2009a. The number of colliding bodies and
maximum number of iterations are considered as 50 and 100
respectively for all objective functions.
Fig. 2. The pairs of objects.
A. IEEE 30-Bus System
NP It comprises of six generators, four transformer taps
vk = 0 k = 1, 2, (27) connected between various buses, and nine shunt
2
compensators. The voltage magnitudes of the buses and the tap
NP settings of a transformer lie between [0.9 1.1] p.u. Shunt
vk = X k NP X k k= + 1,, NP (28) compensators are varied between [0, 0.05] p.u. Moreover, the
2
2
complete information about IEEE 30-bus system can be
where X k is position vector of k th CB. referred from [6].
Step 5: The velocity of the stationary and moving objects Here the CBO method is applied to solve all the four
after collision is expressed as follows: objective functions considered in this work. The best set of the
control variables along with the total fuel cost (TFC), active
(m k + NP
2
+ mk + NP v
2
) k + NP NP
power loss (APL), sum of voltage deviation (SVD) and
voltage stability index (Lmax) for all the cases are given in
vk ' = 2
k = 1, 2, (29)
mk + mk + NP 2 Table I. The optimal TFC obtained in Case 1 is compared with
2
LCA [10], DE [5], simulated annealing (SA) [10], enhanced

vk ' =
(m m ) v
k k NP
2
k
k=
NP
+ 1,, NP (30)
GA (EGA) [4], BHBO [9], genetic evolving ant direction
hybrid DE (GEADHDE) [10], adaptive GA with adjusting the
mk + mk NP 2 population size (AGAPOP) [10], and EADDE [10] that are
2 furnished in Table II. From these results, it is proved that the
where is the coefficient of restitution and it is defined CBO method is capable to minimize the TFC at least value of
as follows. 799.1124 ($/hr) as compared to all the other methods reported
in the literature. The convergence characteristic obtained in
J Case 1 is shown in Fig. 3. In Case 2, CBO method is capable
= 1 (31) to decrease the APL at least value of 2.9369 (MW), while the
J max
other approaches ABC [6], and enhanced GA (EGA) [4] are
where, J is the current iteration number and Jmax is resulting in 3.1078 (MW), and 3.2008 (MW) respectively. The
percentage of APL with respect to the base case for all the
maximum number of iterations. methods is shown in Fig. 4. From Fig. 4, it is confirmed that
Step 6: Based on the new velocities, each colliding body the CBO leads to the best APL savings compared to the other
has updated its position by the following equations. algorithms. The SVD obtained in Case 3 using the proposed
CBO is 0.0932 p.u., which is the optimum SVD as compared
NP to the teaching learning based optimization (TLBO) [10],
X kJ +1 = X kJ + rand (1, NCV ) * VkJ k = 1, 2,, (32)
2 BBO [8], PSO gravitational search algorithm (PSOGSA) [8],
NP AGAPOP [10], and BHBO [9]. The voltage profile in Case 3
X kJ +1 = X J NP + rand (1, NCV ) *VkJ k= + 1,, NP (33) compared to Case 1 is illustrated in Fig. 5. From this, it is
k
2 2 observed that the voltage profile in this case is greatly
improved with respect to the Case 1, which results in an
where NCV is total number of control variables. X kJ , improvement of 94.9165 % in the SVD, but there is a slight
X kJ +1 are position vectors of k th CB in J th , ( J + 1) iterations
th
increment 1.77% in the TFC as compared to Case1. In Case 4
CBO enhanced the voltage stability by minimizing the net
respectively. voltage stability index (VSI) of all the load buses. The net VSI
values for all the load buses are calculated with CBO method
for Case 1 and Case 4 are shown in Fig. 6. From which is ide-
 TABLE I. OPTIMAL CONTROL VARIABLES FOR ALL CASES
Control
Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4
variables
Pg1 (MW) 176.2460 52.8437 183.9404 78.8687
Pg2 (MW) 49.1931 78.7410 33.3919 59.3520
Pg5 (MW) 21.5458 50.0000 23.4786 50.0000
Pg8 (MW) 21.4153 35.0000 16.0317 35.0000
Pg11 (MW) 11.5906 30.0000 24.5152 26.5470
Pg13 (MW) 12.0000 39.7521 12.1504 37.1473
Vg1 (p.u.) 1.1000 1.1000 1.0321 1.0979
Vg2 (p.u.) 1.0852 1.0944 1.0189 1.0943
Vg5 (p.u.) 1.0566 1.0799 1.0185 1.0923
Vg8 (p.u.) 1.0689 1.0853 1.0094 1.0903
Vg11 (p.u.) 1.1000 1.0792 0.9849 1.1000
Vg13 (p.u.) 1.0990 1.0939 1.0011 1.1000
t6-9 (p.u.) 1.0230 0.9474 0.9967 0.9873
t6-10 (p.u.) 0.9135 1.0603 0.9000 0.9000
Fig. 4. Percentage of APL savings for Case 2.
t4-12 (p.u.) 0.9854 0.9963 0.9645 0.9897
t28-27 (p.u.) 0.9689 0.9640 0.9645 0.9526
bsh10 (p.u.) 0.0105 0.0493 0.0428 0.0000 TABLE II. COMPARISON OF SIMULATION RESULTS OF DIFFERENT CASES
bsh12 (p.u.) 0.0500 0.0330 0.0214 0.0419
Different
bsh15 (p.u.) 0.0340 0.0408 0.0500 0.0344 Method TFC ($/hr)
cases
bsh17 (p.u.) 0.0387 0.0500 0.0000 0.0150 CBO 799.1294
bsh20 (p.u.) 0.0500 0.0443 0.0500 0.0000 LCA[10] 799.1974
bsh21 (p.u.) 0.0485 0.0295 0.0428 0.0391 SA [10] 799.45
bsh23 (p.u.) 0.0436 0.0239 0.0500 0.0100 EGA [4] 799.56
bsh24 (p.u.) 0.0485 0.0500 0.0500 0.0000 Case 1
AGAPOP [10] 799.8441
bsh29 (p.u.) 0.0239 0.0188 0.0214 0.0079 BHBO [9] 799.9217
TFC ($/hr) 799.1294 963.9374 813.5987 919.9993 GEADHDE [10] 800.1579
APL (MW) 8.5910 2.9369 10.1085 3.5152 EADDE [10] 800.2014
SVD (p.u.) 1.8334 1.84971 0.0932 1.9867 DE [5] 800.5609
Lmax 0.12809 0.12683 0.14889 0.1245 Method APL (MW)
CBO 2.9369
ntified that bus 30 is identified as most week bus as its L- Case 2 ABC [6] 3.1078
index value with respect to Case1 is highest. In Case 3, the L- EGA[4] 3.2008
index value is reduced by 2.8 % as compared with Case 1. Base Case [6] 5.812
Hence, CBO method enhanced the voltage stability by Method SVD (p.u.)
CBO 0.0932
minimizing the net L-index value for all the load buses. From
TLBO [10] 0.0945
Table II it is confirmed that the max L- index value obtained Case 3
BBO [8] 0.0951
in DE [5], and ABC [6]. From all the above results, it is PSOGSA [7] 0.0968
confirmed that the CBO is an efficient approach for solving BHBO [9] 0.1262
the OPF problems. Method Lmax
Case 4 CBO 0.1245
DE [5] 0.1246
860 ABC[6] 0.1379

850 CBO
Total fuel cost ($/hr)

840

830

820

810

800

790
0 20 40 60 80 100
Fig. 5. Voltage profile in Case 1 and Case 3.
Number of iterations
Fig. 3. Convergence characteristics for Case 1.

Fig. 6. L-index value of all the load buses in Case 1 and Case 4.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a newly developed algorithm called colliding
bodies optimization (CBO), which has been applied to solve
optimal power flow (OPF) problem. CBO is inspired from
collision happens between the two objective bodies, which
obey the laws of momentum and energy. The superiority of
the CBO method is verified on IEEE 30-bus system with
various objective functions. The optimal results attained with
the CBO approach have been compared with the LCA, DE,
AGAPOP, BHBO, GEADHDE, EADDE, ABC, EGA, DSA,
GSA, TLBO, and PSOGSA. These results confirmed that the
CBO method outperforms all the other above-mentioned
methods. Therefore, the results proved that the CBO is
effective for solving small-scale test systems and
implementing to solve multi-objective CBO for large and
practical power systems would be a continuation of the present
work.
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