An Application of Genetic Algorithms to Service Restoration in Distribution Systems

Abstract

Service restoration in distribution systems can be formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem. It is the problem to determine power sources for each load considering radial network constraints and power source limits. Up to now, the problem has been dealt with using conventional methods such as branch and bounds method, expert system, neural networks, and fuzzy reasoning.
Recently, Genetic Algorithms (GA) are noticed as one of the efficient methods for solving large combinator-ial optimization problems. The method can perform parallel search and can search optimal solution easier.
This paper presents an application of GA to service restoration in distribution systems. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated on a typical distribution system model. The result shows that the method can solve the problem efficiently and this tendency becomes dominant by increasing of problem dimensions.