Skill optimization algorithm for solving optimal power flow problem

This research presents the implementation of a modern meta-heuristic algorithm called the skill optimization algorithm (SOA) to solve the optimal power flow problem (OPF). An IEEE 30-bus transmission system is selected to test the real performance of SOA. The main objective function of the study is to minimize the total fuel cost (TFC) of all thermal units. To clarify the high performance of SOA, a classical meta-heuristic named particle swarm optimization (PSO) is also applied for comparison. All results reached by SOA are compared with those of PSO on different criteria. Particularly, SOA has reached smaller cost than PSO by $1.04, equivalent to 0.13% of PSO’s TFC. Furthermore, SOA has reached a more stable performance by finding better average and maximum TFC over fifty runs. The evaluation of these criteria indicates that SOA completely outperforms PSO. Besides, the optimal solution reached by SOA satisfies all considered constraints with zero violation of the dependent variables. Therefore, SOA is highly suggested to handle the OPF problem.