Preventive and Corrective Control Actions on Power Systems via Heuristic Optimization Methods with Consecutive Search Space Reduction

This paper represents a new methodology to improve the performance of population-based optimization algorithms designed for corrective and preventive control actions enhancing power system dynamic security. Unlike many adaptive approaches employing the parameters such as population size, crossover or mutation rates, the proposed method for the performance improvement is based on the reduction of the search space size. In the method, optimization algorithms run consecutively, while the size of the search space is reduced according to the objective function values attained during the optimization process. In this study, generation rescheduling combined with load curtailment is applied as a preventive control action, whereas load shedding is selected as a corrective control. Each of these control actions is determined through the formulation of a security constrained optimization problem and its solution via population-based optimization algorithms. The proposed methodology is successfully applied to differential evolution, particle swarm optimization, artificial bee colony optimization, and big bang big crunch optimization methods for solving the optimization problems in a 16-generator-68-bus system and the Turkish Transmission System with 750 generators and 2600 buses. It is demonstrated that the proposed method provides better solutions with lesser computational complexity than the ones obtained by using fixed search space sizes.