1070
2, MAY 2005
A Multiagent-Based Particle Swarm Optimization
Approach for Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch
B. Zhao, C. X. Guo, and Y. J. Cao, Member, IEEE
AbstractReactive power dispatch in power systems is a com-
plex combinatorial optimization problem involving nonlinear func-
tions having multiple local minima and nonlinear and discontin-
uous constraints. In this paper, a solution to the reactive power dis-
patch problem with a novel particle swarm optimization approach
based on multiagent systems (MAPSO) is presented. This method
integrates the multiagent system (MAS) and the particle swarm op-
timization (PSO) algorithm. An agent in MAPSO represents a par-
ticle to PSO and a candidate solution to the optimization problem.
All agents live in a lattice-like environment, with each agent fixed
on a lattice point. In order to obtain optimal solution quickly, each
agent competes and cooperates with its neighbors, and it can also
learn by using its knowledge. Making use of these agentagent in-
teractions and evolution mechanism of PSO, MAPSO realizes the
purpose of optimizing the value of objective function. MAPSO ap-
plied to optimal reactive power dispatch is evaluated on an IEEE
30-bus power system and a practical 118-bus power system. Simu-
lation results show that the proposed approach converges to better
solutions much faster than the earlier reported approaches. The
optimization strategy is general and can be used to solve other
power system optimization problems as well.
Index TermsMultiagent system, particle swarm optimization
(PSO), power system, reactive power dispatch.
NOMENCLATURE
Voltage angle difference between buses and (rad).
Transfer susceptance between bus and (p.u.).
Active power loss in network (p.u.).
Transfer conductance between bus and (p.u.).
Conductance of branch (p.u.).
Set of numbers of total buses excluding slack bus.
Set of numbers of total buses.
Set of numbers of possible reactive power source
installation buses.
Set of numbers of power demand buses.
Set of numbers of network branches.
Set of numbers of generator buses.
Set of numbers of buses adjacent to bus , including
bus .
Set of numbers of buses.
Set of numbers of buses.
Set of numbers of buses on which injected reactive
power outside limits.
Manuscript received August 13, 2004; revised December 27, 2004. This work
is supported by the Outstanding Young Scholars Fund (no. 60225006) and In-
novative Research Group Fund of Natural Science Foundation of China. Paper
no. TPWRS-00444-2004.
The authors are with the College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang Uni-
versity, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, China (e-mail: zhaobozju@zju.edu.cn;
chuangxinguo@vip.sina.com; yijiacao@zju.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2005.846064
0885-8950/$20.00 2005 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO.
Set of numbers of transformer branches.
Set of numbers of buses on which voltages outside
limits.
Demanded active power at bus (p.u.).
Injected active power at bus (p.u.).
Active power loss in branch (p.u.).
Power flow in branch (p.u.).
Injected active power at slack bus (p.u.).
Reactive power source installation at bus (p.u.).
Demanded reactive power at bus (p.u.).
Injected reactive power at bus (p.u.).
Tap position of transformer .
Voltage magnitude of bus (p.u.).
Voltage vectors of buses (p.u.).
Voltage vectors of buses (p.u.).
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE reactive power dispatch problem has a significant
influence on secure and economic operation of power
systems. Reactive power optimization is a subproblem of the
optimal power-flow (OPF) calculation, which determines all
kinds of controllable variables, such as reactive-power outputs
of generators and static reactive power compensators, tap ratios
of transformers, outputs of shunt capacitors/reactors, etc., and
minimizes transmission losses or other appropriate objective
functions, while satisfying a given set of physical and oper-
ating constraints. Since transformer tap ratios and outputs of
shunt capacitors/reactors have a discrete nature, while reactive
power outputs of generators and static VAR compensators,
bus-voltage magnitudes, and angles are, on the other hand,
continuous variables, the reactive power optimization problem
can be exactly formulated using a mixed-integer/nonlinear pro-
gramming model, i.e., cast as a nonlinear optimization problem
with a mixture of discrete and continuous variables.
Up to now, a number of techniques ranging from classical
techniques like gradient-based optimization algorithms to var-
ious mathematical programming techniques have been applied
to solve this problem [1][4]. Recently, due to the basic effi-
ciency of interior-point methods, which offer fast convergence
and convenience in handling inequality constraints in compar-
ison with other methods, interior-point linear programming
[5], quadratic programming [6], and nonlinear programming
[7] methods have been widely used to solve the OPF problem
of large-scale power systems. However, these techniques
have severe limitations in handling nonlinear, discontinuous
functions and constraints, and function having multiple local
minima. Unfortunately, the original reactive power problem
does have these properties. In all these efforts some or the
ZHAO et al.: A MULTIAGENT-BASED PSO APPROACH
other simplification has been done to get over the inherent
limitations of the solution technique. The combinatorial-search
approaches, branch-and-bound and cutting-plane algorithms,
are usually used to solve the mixed-integer programming model
[8]. However, these methods are nonpolynomial and all suffer
from the so-called problem of curse of dimensionality for
large-scale applications, making them unsuitable for large-scale
OPF problems. To overcome the drawback of these algorithms,
several efficient algorithms have been proposed. Aoki et al.
[9] addressed the issue of discrete variables by an approxima-
tion-search method for recursive mixed-integer programming
in solving large-scale VAR planning problems. Bakirtzis and
Meliopous [10] proposed a linear-programming methodology
to handle the discrete shunt capacitors/reactors in an optimiza-
tion problem by using Driebecks penalty algorithm. Liu et al.
[8] proposed a penalty-based discretization algorithm to handle
the discreteness of shunt capacitors/reactors during the solution
process of a Newton OPF method without combinatorial search,
which has been implemented in a production-grade Newton
OPF program and tested on actual power networks.
In the last decade, many new stochastic search methods have
been developed for the global optimization problems, such
as genetic algorithms, evolutionary programming and particle
swarm optimization. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is
one of the evolutionary computation techniques [11]. It was
developed through simulation of a simplified social system,
and has been found to be robust in solving continuous non-
linear optimization problems. The PSO technique can generate
high-quality solutions within shorter calculation time and have
more stable convergence characteristic than other stochastic
methods. Although the PSO seems to be sensitive to the tuning
of some weights or parameters, many researches are still
in progress to prove its potential in solving complex power
system problems [12], [13]. Kassabalidis et al. [14] introduced
dynamic security border identification using enhanced PSO.
Naka et al. [15] proposed a hybrid PSO for distribution state
estimation. It has been found that the PSO quickly finds the
high-quality optimal solution for many power system optimiza-
tion problems. Generally, PSO has a more global searching
ability at the beginning of the run and a local search near the
end of the run. Therefore, while solving problems with more
local optima, there are more possibilities for the PSO to explore
local optima at the end of run. However, the reactive power
optimization problem does have these properties in itself. For
these reasons, a reliable global approach to power system
optimization problems would be of considerable value to power
engineering community.
Recently, agent-based computation has been studied in the
field of distributed artificial intelligence [16] and has been
widely used in other branches of computer science [17].
Problem solving is an area that many multiagent-based ap-
plications are concerned with. Liu et al. [18] introduced an
application of distributed techniques for solving constraint
satisfaction problem. Enlightened by multiagent system and
PSO, this paper integrates multiagent system and PSO to form
a multiagent-based PSO approach (MAPSO), for solving the
reactive power optimization problem. In MAPSO, an agent
represents a particle to PSO and a candidate solution to the
1071
optimization problem. All agents live in a lattice-like envi-
ronment, with each agent fixed on a lattice point. In order to
obtain optimal solution quickly, they compete and cooperate
with their neighbors, and they can also use knowledge. Making
use of these agentagent interactions and evolution mechanism
of PSO in a lattice-like environment, the proposed method can
find high-quality solutions reliably with the faster convergence
characteristics in a reasonably good computation time. MAPSO
applied for optimal reactive power is evaluated on an IEEE
30-bus power system and a practical 118-bus power system.
Simulation results show that the proposed approach converges
to better solutions much faster than the earlier reported ap-
proaches.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II de-
scribes mathematical formulation of optimal reactive power dis-
patch. Section III describes MAPSO in detail. Simulation results
and comparison with other approaches are given in Section IV.
Finally, conclusions are presented in Section V.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
The objective of the reactive power dispatch is to minimize
the active power loss in the transmission network, which can be
described as follows:
(1)
where ; ; . The symbols of the above
equation and in the following context are given in the Nomen-
clature section. The minimization of the above function is sub-
ject to a number of constraints:
(2)
(3)
and
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
where power flow equations are used as equality constraints, re-
active power source installation restrictions, reactive generation
restrictions, transformer tap-setting restrictions, bus voltage re-
strictions and power flow of each branch are used as inequality
constraints.
In the most of the nonlinear optimization problems, the con-
straints are considered by generalizing the objective function
using penalty terms. In the reactive power dispatch problem, the
generator bus voltages and , the tap position of trans-
former , and the amount of the reactive power source installa-
tion are control variables which are self-constrained. Volt-
ages of bus and injected reactive power of bus
1072 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO. 2, MAY 2005

are constrained by adding them as penalty terms to the ob- Suitable selection of inertia weight provides a balance
jective function (1). The above problem is generalized as fol- between global and local explorations. In general, the inertia
lows: weight is set according to the following equation:

(15)

(9) where is the maximum number of generations, and

where and are the penalty factors, and both penalty
factors are large positive constants; and are defined
as
(10)
(11)
III. MULTIAGENT-BASED PSO APPROACH
A. PSO
PSO is a novel optimization method developed by Eberhart,
et al. [11], [19]. It is a multiagent search technique that traces its
evolution to the emergent motion of a flock of birds searching
for food. It uses a number of particles that constitute a swarm.
Each particle traverses the search space looking for the global
minimum (or maximum). In a PSO system, particles fly around
in a multidimensional search space. During flight, each particle
adjusts its position according to its own experience, and the ex-
perience of neighboring particles, making use of the best posi-
tion encountered by itself and its neighbors. The swarm direc-
tion of a particle is defined by the set of particles neighboring to
the particle and its history experience.
Let and denote a particle coordinates (position) and its
corresponding flight speed (velocity) in a search space, respec-
tively. The best previous position of a particle is recorded and
represented as . The index of the best particle among all
the particles in the group is represented as . To ensure
the convergence of PSO, Eberhart and Shi indicate that use of a
constriction function may be necessary [19]. At last, the modi-
fied velocity and position of each particle can be calculated as
shown in the following formulas:
(12)
(13)
where is pointer of generations, is current position of par-
ticle at the th generation, is velocity of particle at the th
generation , is inertia weight factor, and are acceler-
ation constant, is a uniform random value in the range
[0,1], is the constriction factor which is a function of and
as reflected in
is the current number of generations.
In the above procedures, the particle velocity is limited by
some maximum value . The parameter determines
the resolution, or fitness, with which regions are to be searched
between the present position and the target position. This limit
enhances the local exploration of the problem space and it real-
istically simulates the incremental changes of human learning.
If is too high, particles might fly past good solutions. If
is too small, particles may not explore sufficiently beyond
local solutions. In many experiences with PSO, was often
set at 10%20% of the dynamic range of the variable on each
dimension.
B. Multiagent System
Agent-based computation has been studied for some years in
the field of artificial intelligence. Multiagent system (MAS) is
computational system in which several agents interact or work
together in order to achieve goals. According to [20] and [21],
an agent is a physical or virtual entity that essentially has the
following properties.
1) Agents live and act in a given environment.
2) Agents are able to sense its local environment, and to
interact with other agents in its local environment.
3) Agents attempt to achieve particular goals or perform
particular tasks.
4) Agents are able to respond in a timely fashion to
changes that occur in them based on their learning
ability.
MAS technology provides an opportunity to compute and op-
timize many complicated problems. Agents in MAS act collec-
tively as a society and they collaborate (or compete) to achieve
their own individual goals as well as the common goal. This co-
operative and competitive feature matches the essential nature
of a particle in PSO. Hence, this paper combines PSO and MAS
to form a new optimal algorithm. In general, the following four
elements should be defined when MAS is used to solve prob-
lems:
1) the meaning and the purpose of each agent in MAS;
2) an environment where all agents live;
3) the definition of a local environment;
4) a set of behavioral rules, governing the interaction be-
tween the agents and their environment. They are the
laws of the agent universe.
In the following, the definitions of the above four elements
and the implementation of MAPSO are described in detail.

(14) C. MAPSO
In this study, MAS and PSO are integrated to form the pro-
posed MAPSO method for solving reactive power optimiza-
where and . tion dispatch. In MAPSO, an agent represents not only a candi-
ZHAO et al.: A MULTIAGENT-BASED PSO APPROACH 1073

date solution to the optimization problem but also a particle to

PSO. Firstly, a lattice-like environment is constructed, with each
agent fixed on a lattice-point. In order to obtain optimal solution
quickly, each agent competes and cooperates with their neigh-
bors, and they can also use knowledge to obtain high-quality op-
timal solution by self-learning. Making use of evolution mecha-
nism of PSO, it can speed up the transfer of information among
agents, and the proposed MAPSO method can realize the pur-
pose of optimizing the value of objective function.
1) Purpose of Each Agent: In MAPSO, an agent repre-
sents a candidate solution to the optimization problem in hand
and is a particle to PSO. Hence, agent has a fitness value to Fig. 1. Structure of the environment.
the optimization problem. For solving reactive power problem,
its fitness value is the value of the active power loss in the trans-
mission network, i.e., in (1) its knowledge. On the basis of such behaviors, three operators
are designed for the agents.
Competition and Cooperation Operator: Suppose that the
competition and cooperation operator is performed on the agent
located at , and , represented
(16) a real-valued vector in the search space. Suppose that
The purpose of is to minimize the real power transmission is the agent with minimum fit-
losses and keep all the voltages within the limits as much as ness value among the neighbors of , namely, , and
possible. In reactive power optimization problem, each agent , then . If agent satisfies (18), it is a
carries all control variables to be optimized. winner; otherwise it is a loser
2) Definition of an Environment: In MAS, all agents live in
an environment. An environment is organized as a lattice-like
structure in Fig. 1. In the environment , each agent is fixed (18)
on a lattice-point and each circle represents an agent; the data
in circle represents its position in the environment . Due to If is a winner, it can still live in the agent lattice, and its
representation of a particle in PSO, each agent in its database location in the search space will not change. If it is a loser, it
contains two data, i.e., particles current velocity and its coordi- must die, and its lattice point will be occupied by a new agent
nates in the search space. The size of is , where . The new agent is deter-
is an integer. The size is also the total number of particles mined by the following two strategies in MAPSO.
for PSO. Strategy 1: is determined by
3) Definition of the Local Environment: Since each agent
can only sense its local environment in MAS, the definition of (19)
the local environment is very important in the proposed method.
In this paper, suppose that the agent located at is repre- where is uniform random value in the range
sented as , , then the neighbors of , [0,1]. Suppose that
, are defined as follows: is vector of the upper bound of the search space, and
is the vector of the
lower bound of the search space. If , then
(17)
. If , then .
From (19), strategy 1, a kind of heuristic crossover in evolu-
where
tionary algorithms, is in favor of reserving some useful infor-
mation of a loser.
Strategy 2: Enlightened by the inversion operation in evo-
lutionary algorithms, is firstly mapped on [0, 1] ac-
cording to

From (17), each agent has four neighbors. They form a little (20)
local environment in which agent can only sense.
4) Behavioral Strategies for Agents: To quickly and accu- Then, is determined by
rately achieve its purposes, each agent has some behaviors. In
MAPSO, each agent firstly competes and cooperates with its
neighbors to diffuse its useful information to the whole envi-
ronment, and it can also use evolution mechanism of PSO and (21)
1074 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO. 2, MAY 2005

where , , and . Finally, is

obtained by mapping back to according
to

(22)

From strategy 2, it has a function of random search and is

better than random search in that it makes use of the information
of a winner.
According to the above analysis, strategy 1 puts emphasis
on exploitation while strategy 2 puts emphasis on exploration.
Generally, strategy 2 is employed in the first iterative process
in order to explore the global search space. With the process of
iteration, MAPSO makes use of the strategy 1 to further exploit
the local search space.
PSO Operator: After competition and cooperation oper-
ator, the proposed MAPSO method integrates evolution mecha-
nism of PSO to quickly and accurately obtain the optimal solu-
tion. Since each agent can only sense its local environment, its
behaviors of competition and cooperation can only take place
between the agent and its neighbors. An agent interacts with
its neighbors so that information is transferred. Owing to the
ability to interact with its neighbors, the information is slowly
diffused from the local agent lattice to the whole agent lattice.
In order to quickly diffuse information to the whole agent lat-
tice and enhance computational efficiency, the proposed method
assimilates evolution mechanism of PSO. Hence, each agent ad-
justs its position in the search space according to its own experi-
ence, and the experience of the best agent among all the agents Fig. 2. Flow chart of self-learning operator.
in the environment, making use of the best position encountered
by itself and the best agent. Each agent renews its position by
(12) and (13), and sets its position at the lower or upper bound Next, the neighborhood competition and cooperation oper-
of the search space if having any violation. ator with evolution mechanism of PSO is iteratively performed
on . Finally, is replaced by the agent with minimum fit-
Self-Learning Operator: Each agent is able to learn by
ness value found during the above process. Fig. 2 describes the
using its knowledge in order to further enhance its ability for
details of self-learning operator. In Fig. 2, is the number
solving the problems. Kazarlis, et al. use a small scale GA as
of generations, and is the agent with the minimum fit-
the local searcher and obtain a good performance [22]. Enlight-
ness value in the th generation.
ened by their idea, this paper proposes the self-learning oper-
ator which uses a small scale MAPSO to realize the behavior of
using knowledge. D. Mixed-Variable Handing Methods
In self-learning operator of agent , In its basic form, the proposed MAPSO algorithm can only
first of all, a lattice-like environment, , is constructed. The handle continuous variables. However, tap position of trans-
size of is , where is an integer, and all formations and reactive power source installation are discrete
agents, , , are generated according variable or integer variables in optimal reactive power dispatch
to problem. In this paper, MAPSO has been extended to handle
, mixed variables.
(23) To handle integer variables, simply truncating the real values
otherwise
to integers to calculate fitness value will not effect the search
where is deter- performance significantly. The truncation is only performed in
mined, as shown in (24) at the bottom of the page, where evaluating the fitness function. That is, the swarm will fly in
represents the search radius. a continuous search space regardless of the variable type.

(24)
otherwise
ZHAO et al.: A MULTIAGENT-BASED PSO APPROACH
For discrete variables of the th particle , the most straight-
forward way is to use the indices of the set of discrete variables
with elements
(25)
Let denote the continuous variables with elements
(26)
then particle is denoted by . For particle , the
index value of the discrete variable is then optimized in-
stead of the discrete value of the variable directly. In the pop-
ulation, the indices of the discrete variables of the th particle
should be the float point variables before truncation. That is,
, is the number of discrete variables. Hence,
the objective function of the th particle can be expressed as
follows:
(27)
where
(28)
where and denote the feasible subsets
of continuous and discrete variables of particle , respectively.
denotes the greatest integer less than the real value .
E. Implementation of MAPSO for Reactive Power
Optimal Dispatch
In MAPSO, many different operators are utilized to simulate
the behaviors of agents, and realize their purposes. In order to
reduce the computational cost, the self-learning operator is only
performed on the agent with the minimum fitness value in each
generation, but it has an important effect on the performance
of MAPSO. The proposed method can quickly and accurately
converge to the optimal solutions for reactive power optimal
dispatch. The details of the overall algorithm are as follows.
Step 1) Input parameters of system and algorithm, and
specify the lower and upper boundaries of each
variable.
Step 2) Generate a lattice-like environment , and initialize
randomly each agent.
Step 3) Evaluate the fitness value of each agent based on the
Newton-Raphson power flow analysis results and
the proposed mixed-variable handing methods.
Step 4) Update the time counter . The initial generator bus voltages and transformer taps are
Step 5) Perform the neighborhood competition and cooper-
ation operator on each agent.
Step 6) Execute the PSO operator and further adjust its po-
sition in the search space on each agent according
to (12) and (13).
Step 7) Evaluate the fitness value of each agent based on the
Newton-Raphson power flow analysis results and
the proposed mixed-variable handing methods.
Step 8) Find the best agent with the minimum fitness value,
and then perform the self-learning operator.
1075
Step 9) If one of the stopping criteria is satisfied then go to
Step 10. Otherwise, go to Step 4.
Step 10) Output the agent with the minimum fitness value in
the last generation.
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
To verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed
MAPSO based reactive power optimization approach, the IEEE
30-bus power system and a practical 118-bus area power system
are used as the test systems. The MAPSO has been implemented
in Matlab 6.5 programming language and numerical tests are
carried on a Pentium IV 2.0-G computer.
Some parameters must be assigned before MAPSO is used
to solve reactive power optimization dispatch. is
equivalent to the population size in traditional PSO, so
can be chosen from 5 to 10. In self-learning operator, with con-
sideration of the computational cost, it is better to let be
smaller than 5 and range from 5 to 10. In all study sys-
tems, the following MAPSO parameters are used: ,
i.e., the members of a particle are 36, ,
, , , inertia weight factor
, acceleration constant , both
penalty factors in (9) are chosen, .
A. IEEE 30-Bus Power System
The IEEE 30-bus system is shown in Fig. 3 and the system
data and operating conditions are given in the [23]. The network
consists of 48 branches, six generator-buses, and 22 load-buses.
Four branches, (6,9), (6,10), (4,12) and (27,28), are under load
tap setting transformer branches. The possible reactive power
source installation buses are 3, 10 and 24. Six buses are selected
as -buses and -buses as follows: -buses: bus 2, 5, 8,
11,13, -bus: bus 1. The others are -buses. The variable
limits are listed in Table I. The transformer taps and the reactive
power source installation are discrete variables with the changes
step of 0.01 p.u.
To demonstrate the superiority of the proposed MAPSO
approach, simulation results have been compared with various
techniques available in literature, namely, standard genetic
algorithm (SGA), adaptive GA (AGA) in [23], EP method
presented in [24], Broydens nonlinear programming method
[25] and PSO method. The initial conditions for all the methods
are same and are given as follows:
p.u. p.u.
set to 1.0. The total generations and power losses are obtained
as follows:
p.u. p.u.
p.u. p.u.
The voltages outside the limits on three -buses are given
as follows:
1076
Fig. 3. IEEE 30-bus power system.
TABLE I
VARIABLE LIMITS (P.U.)
Table II summarizes the results of the optimal settings as ob-
tained by different methods. These results show that the optimal
dispatch solutions determined by the MAPSO lead to lower ac-
tive power loss than that found by other methods, which con-
firms that the MAPSO is well capable of determining the global
or near-global optimum dispatch solution. Moreover, these re-
sults show that maximum saving is obtained by the MAPSO
method. At the same time, the proposed method succeeds in
keeping the dependent variables within their limits.
Owing to the randomness in the proposed MAPSO, SGA and
PSO, these algorithms are executed 50 times when applied to
the test system. The best and worst reactive power dispatch solu-
tions together with the associated power loss found by the three
methods are tabulated in Table III. MAPSO shows good con-
sistency by keeping the difference between the best and worst
solutions within 1%. In addition, the average execution times
summarized in Table III show that MAPSO is faster than SGA
and PSO in speed. Table IV lists the best control variables found
by the above three methods in the 50 run times. The optimiza-
tion search procedures by SGA, PSO and MAPSO are shown in
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO. 2, MAY 2005
TABLE II
COMPARISON OF OPTIMAL TRANSMISSION LOSS FOR DIFFERENT
METHODS (P.U.)
Fig. 4. It can be seen that, by using the MAPSO method, system
losses are drastically reduced at the early iterations and the total
iterations for convergence can be reduced greatly.
B. Practical 118-Bus Power System
The proposed MAPSO is applied to a practical 118-bus power
system. The power system has 181 transmission elements, 17
generators for AVR control, nine transformers with 9 to 25 posi-
tions, and 14 reactive power source installation buses. For more
information about the system, one can refer to [26]. At initial op-
erating condition, system losses are 141.84 MW and represents
about 2.72% of the total real-power generation in the system.
There exist 11 deviations at the initial operating point. SGA,
PSO and MAPSO are compared in 300 searching iterations. The
same parameters for IEEE 30-bus system are used in the simu-
lation.
To avoid any hazardous interpretation of optimization results,
related to the choice of particular initial agents, we performed
ZHAO et al.: A MULTIAGENT-BASED PSO APPROACH
TABLE III
COMPARISON OF SIMULATION RESULTS IN THE IEEE 30-BUS SYSTEM (P.U.)
TABLE IV
VALUES OF CONTROL VARIABLES AFTER OPTIMIZATION BY SGA,
PSO, AND MAPSO (P.U)
Fig. 4. Optimization procedure by three methods for IEEE 30-bus system.
the simulation 50 times, starting from different agents randomly
generated in the search space. Table V shows the best and worst
loss values and the computational time. From Table V,et it can
be seen that the MAPSO method can generate better solution
with the bigger possibility than SGA and PSO. The average loss
value by the proposed MAPSO method is smaller than the best
results by SGA and PSO. Fig. 5 shows convergence character-
istic for the 118-bus system by the three methods. It is clear
for the figure that the solution obtained by MAPSO converges
to high-quality solutions at the early iterations (about 30 itera-
tions). The average iteration to the best result by the proposed
method is about 35. However, the average iterations by SGA
and PSO are 72 and 288, respectively. The average execution
time by MAPSO is about three times faster than that by SGA.
1077
TABLE V
COMPARISON OF SIMULATION RESULTS IN THE PRACTICAL 118-BUS
SYSTEM (P.U.)
Fig. 5. Optimization procedure by SGA, PSO, and MAPSO for the practical
118-bus system.
At the same time, the average execution time of MAPSO is 21%
less than that of PSO. Considering together the characteristics
of MAS and PSO, the proposed method performs better than the
PSO model, both in the quality of the solution discovered and
in the velocity of convergence, and simulation results show that
MAPSO outperforms SGA and PSO, and is competent for the
practical reactive power optimization problems.
From Tables III and V, the computational times of the pro-
posed MAPSO method are about 41.93 sec for the IEEE 30-bus
system and about 117.35 sec for the practical 118-bus system.
The CPU time is so large, because the time is the sum of the evo-
lutionary computing and the power flow solution time. However,
from our experiments, almost 70% of the total computing time
is spent on the load flow algorithm. Unfortunately, the power
flow computing is indispensable in fitness value evaluation. In
order to effectively decrease the computing time, parallelization
techniques and self-adaptation techniques in evolutionary algo-
rithms could be useful [23], [27].
V. CONCLUSION
A MAPSO method has been developed for determination of
the global or near-global optimum solution for optimal reactive
power dispatch. The proposed method benefits mainly from the
environment of the agent lattice and the behaviors of agents. In
the environment, each agent can compete and cooperate with
its neighbors, and further adjust its position in the search space
according to PSO. Thus, each agent can quickly transfer its
useful information to the global environment, and all agents
can share the information after a process of diffusion. Owing
to the three operators, the advantage of the MAPSO method
is its ability in finding high-quality solutions reliably with the
1078
faster convergence properties The performance of the proposed
method demonstrated through its evaluation on the IEEE 30-bus
power system and a practical 118-bus power system shows that
MAPSO is able to undertake global search with a fast conver-
gence rate and a feature of robust computation. From the sim-
ulation study, it has been found that MAPSO converges to the
global optimum. The optimization strategy is general and can
be used to other power system optimization problems as well.
REFERENCES
[1] K. Y. Lee, Y. M. Park, and J. L. Ortiz, A united approach to optimal
real and reactive power dispatch, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 1, no.
2, pp. 11471153, May 1985.
[2] Y. Y. Hong, D. I. Sun, S. Y. Lin, and C. J. Lin, Multi-year multi-case
optimal AVR planning, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 5, no. 4, pp.
12941301, Nov. 1990.
[3] N. Deeb and S. M. Shaidepour, Linear reactive power optimization in
a large power network using the decomposition approach, IEEE Trans.
Power Syst., vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 428435, May 1990.
[4] J. R. S. Manlovani and A. V. Garcia, A heuristic method for reactive
power planning, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 6874,
Feb. 1995.
[5] S. Granville, Optimal reactive dispatch through interior point methods,
IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 136146, Feb. 1994.
[6] J. A. Momoh, S. X. Guo, E. C. Ogbuobiri, and R. Adapa, The quadratic
interior point method solving power system optimization problems,
IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 13271336, Aug. 1994.
[7] Y. C. Wu, A. S. Debs, and R. E. Marsten, A direct nonlinear predictor-
corrector primal-dual interior point algorithm for optimal power flows,
IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 876883, May 1994.
[8] W. H. E. Liu, A. D. Papalexopoulos, and W. F. Tinney, Discrete shunt
controls in a Newton optimal power flow, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol.
7, no. 4, pp. 15091518, Nov. 1992.
[9] K. Aoki, M. Fan, and A. Nishikori, Optimal var planning by approxi-
mation method for recursive mixed-integer linear programming, IEEE
Trans. Power Syst., vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 17411747, Nov. 1988.
[10] A. G. Bakirtzis and A. P. Meliopous, Incorporation of switching op-
erations in power system corrective control computation, IEEE Trans.
Power Syst., vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 669676, Aug. 1987.
[11] J. Kennedy and R. Eberhart, Particle swarm optimization, in Proc.
IEEE Int. Conf. Neural Netw., vol. 4, Nov. 1995, pp. 19421948.
[12] Z. L. Gaing, Particle swarm optimization to solving the economic dis-
patch considering the generator constraints, IEEE Trans. Power Syst.,
vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 11871195, Aug.. 2003.
[13] H. Yoshida et al., A particle swarm optimization for reactive power and
voltage control considering voltage security assessment, IEEE Trans.
Power Syst., vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 12321239, Nov. 2000.
[14] I. N. Kassabalidis et al., Dynamic security border identification using
enhanced particle swarm optimization, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol.
17, no. 3, pp. 723729, Aug. 2002.
[15] S. Naka et al., A hybrid particle swarm optimization for distribution
state estimation, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 6068,
Feb. 2003.
[16] J. Liu, Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: Explorations in
Learning Self-Organization, and Adaptive Computation, Singapore:
World Scientific, 2001.
[17] J. Liu, Y. Y. Tang, and Y. C. Cao, An evolutionary autonomous agents
approach to image feature extraction, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput., vol.
1, no. 1, pp. 141158, Feb. 1997.
[18] J. Liu, H. Jing, and Y. Y. Tang, Multiagent oriented constraint satisfac-
tion, Artificial Intell., vol. 136, pp. 101144, Jan. 2002.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO. 2, MAY 2005
[19] R. C. Eberhart and Y. Shi, Comparing inertia weights and constriction
factors in particle swarm optimization, in Proc. Congr. Evol. Comput.,
2000, pp. 8488.
[20] M. Wooldridge, An Introduction to MultiAgent System. New York:
Wiley, 2002.
[21] W. Z. Zhong et al., A multiagent genetic algorithm for global numerical
optimization, IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern. B, Cybern., vol. 34, pp.
11281141, Apr. 2004.
[22] S. A. Kazarlis, S. E. Papadakis, J. B. Theocharis, and V. Petridis, Mi-
crogenetic algorithms as generalized hill-climbing operators for GA op-
timization, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput., vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 204217, Jun.
2001.
[23] Q. H. Wu, Y. J. Cao, and J. Y. Wen, Optimal reactive power dispatch
using an adaptive genetic algorithm, Int. J. Elect. Power Energy Syst.,
vol. 20, pp. 563569, Aug. 1998.
[24] L. L. Lai and J. T. Ma, Application of evolutionary programming to
reactive power planning Comparison with nonlinear programming ap-
proach, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 198204, Feb. 1997.
[25] D. B. Das and C. Patvardhan, Reactive power dispatch with a hybrid
stochastic search technique, Int. J. Elect. Power Energy Syst., vol. 24,
pp. 731736, Sep. 2002.
[26] R. Zimmerman and D. Gan, MATPOWER: A Matlab Power System Sim-
ulation Package. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1997.
[27] Y. W. Zhong and J. G. Yang, A genetic algorithm for tasks scheduling
in parallel multiprocessor systems, in Proc. Mach. Learning Cybern.,
vol. 3, Nov. 2003, pp. 17851790.
B. Zhao was born in 1977 in Guizhou, China. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc.
degrees in the field of electrical engineering from Guizhou University, Guiyang,
China, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He is currently working toward the Ph.D
degree at Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, China.
His research interest is application of intelligent systems and evolutionary
computation to power system planning and operations.
C. X. Guo was born in 1969 in Hubei, China. He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D.
degrees in the field of electrical engineering from Huazhong University of Sci-
ence and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China, in 1992 and 1997, respectively.
From 1997 to 2003, he worked as a Senior Engineer and General Manager
with the Department of Electric Power System Automation, Dongfang Elec-
tronics Company, Yantai, China. Currently, he is a post-doctoral research fellow
at Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, China. His research interest is in power system
operation and automation.
Y. J. Cao (M97) received the B.Sc. degree from Xian Jiaotong University,
Xian, China, in 1988 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Huazhong Uni-
versity of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China, in 1991 and 1994,
respectively.
From September 1994 to April 2000, he worked as a visiting research fellow
at Loughborough University, Loughborough, U.K., Liverpool University, Liver-
pool, U.K., and University of the West England, Bristol, U.K. He was a Full Pro-
fessor with HUST from 2000 to 2001. Currently, he is a Full Professor with Zhe-
jiang University, Zhejiang, China. His research interests are in power system sta-
bility control and application of evolutionary computation and intelligent agents
in power systems.