Development of ANT Algorithm For Load Flow Analysis

Y. Kumar, K. Dwivedi, Ganga Agnihotri on NRLF, it will not be able to determine the solution at the steady-state ceiling point of the system. The advent of power electronic devices provides new ways of improving and expanding the performance and capacity of power transmission systems. Transmission systems which adopt power electronic devices for the control of power transmission have been referred to as flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS). The load flow equations of a power system containing FACTS will be much more nonlinear and the equation set may be non-convex. The conventional NRLF method may not solve the equations satisfactorily. The Newton-Raphson (NR) method has been widely used in the last two decades in the study of load flow in power networks during the planning and the operation of power systems. The NR approach and its variants such as the fastdecoupled load flow method [4] have very fast convergence characteristics. However, it has the following limitations: (a) the performance is highly dependent on the starting values of the variables in the load flow problem; (b) it is incapable of determining abnormal operation solutions; (c) the solution process diverges when the power system is loaded extremely; and (d) it has difficulties in dealing with nonlinear devices such as FACTS devices. The load flow algorithm based on genetic algorithm (GA) [5, 6] works well with non-linear load. A problem with GAs is that the genes from a few comparatively highly fit (but not optimal) individuals may rapidly come to dominate the population, causing it to converge on a local maximum. Once the population has converged, the ability of the GA to continue to search for better solutions is effectively eliminated: crossover of almost identical chromosomes produces little that is new. Only mutation remains to explore entirely new ground, and this simply performs a slow, random search. The great advantage of GAs is the fact that they find a solution through evolution; this is also the biggest disadvantage. Evolution is inductive; in nature life does not evolve towards a good solution - it evolves away from bad circumstances. This can cause a species to evolve into an evolutionary dead end. Likewise, GAs risk finding a suboptimal solution. The proposed method of load flow is based ant colony optimization method. The proposed method does not find the solution through evolution. Therefore, due to absent in evolution of process, it does not give sub-optimal solution and hence give more accurate solution. It is efficient because searching of better solution does not remain continues even after getting optimal solution unlike GA. In the proposed

Abstract--Basic Ant Colony Algorithm is one kind of new heuristic biological modeling method which has the ability of global searching. In this paper, an efficient and reliable ant algorithm based load flow algorithm is developed. The load flow equations of a power system containing FACTS will be much more nonlinear and the equation set may be non-convex. The conventional NRLF method may not solve these equations satisfactorily. The load flow problem is solved as optimization problem in the proposed method. The developed method, do not fail even with non-linear and heavy load due to virtue of Ant Algorithm. The different constraints, voltage, current and overloading are also considered. The power balance requirement and voltage magnitude constraint satisfaction methods in the algorithm are presented and incorporated into the ant algorithm for solving load flow problem. The new algorithm can determine multiple load flow solutions and can be used to determine multiple load flow solutions and to determine the loadability limits of transmission system. The developed method is tested on different test systems and found accurate, efficient and successful with non-linear load also. Index TermsAnt, load flow, Genetic algorithm.

I. INTRODUCTION

hen the system is heavily loaded, the system becomes stressed and the conventional method Newton-Raphson Load Flow (NRLF) [1], [2], [3] faces difficulty to converge this is because when the power system is operating very close to its ceiling load point, the Jacobian of the loadflow equation set tends to be singular. However, it is of practical importance to be able to determine the load-flow solutions of the system under highly stressed conditions. It is also well known that generally the load-flow equation set has multiple solutions. In the multiple solutions, one is the normal solution and the others are abnormal solutions. However, if the system is operating at its steady-state ceiling point there is only one solution. A limiting condition of the system is indicated. When the existence of near solutions is found, the estimation of the steady-state operating limit is important since any extra loading imposed on the system beyond the limit can lead to voltage collapse. To achieve this, however, it requires a load-flow algorithm which can determine multiple solutions. Although an optimal multiplier method has been developed and incorporated in the NRLF method to find a pair of near solutions, it is not general enough to find all the multiple solutions. Moreover, since this method is still based

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method, the limitations and the difficulties of NRLF method are eliminated because no Jacobian matrix is involved. The concept of the developed method is based on ant colony that does not require the formation of the Jacobian matrix and is almost insensitive to the initial settings of the solution variable. II.
LOAD FLOW PROBLEM

III. OBJECTIVE FUNCTION Apart from solving the load flow problem by the conventional methods, the problem can be viewed as an optimization problem, in which an objective function H is to be minimized. The objective function can be defined as the total squared mismatch H and is expressed as

A mathematical description of the load flow problem is given below. Consider there are a total of N nodes in a power system. At any node i, the nodal active power P and reactive i power, Qi are given by
N N j =1 N

H=

kNPQ + NPV

| P |2 + k

kNPQ

| Q | + | V |
2 k kNPV k

(7)

Where, N PQ , N PV are the total number of PQ & PV nodes respectively. The optimization of ' H ' can be carried out by the Ant colony optimization technique presented in the following sections. When the load flow problem is solvable, the value of ' H ' is zero or in the vicinity of zero at the end of the optimization process. If the problem is unsolvable, the value of ' H ' is non-zero. The square root of ' H ' can be regarded as the minimum distance between the solution point in the unsolvable region & the boundary of the solvable region. IV. ANT SYSTEM An Ant Colony Optimization [7, 8, 9, 10] is a random stochastic population based heuristic algorithm on agents that simulate the natural behavior of ants developing mechanisms of cooperation and learning which enables the exploration of the positive feedback between agents as a search mechanism. An important and interesting behavior of ant colonies is their foraging behavior and, in particular, how ants can find shortest paths between food sources and their

j =1 N

Qi = Fi

j =1

(Gij E j Bij F j ) Ei
&

Where

Gij

Bij are

the (i, j )th element of the

Ei & Fi are real & imaginary parts of the voltage at node i . If node i is a PQ node where the load
admittance matrix. demand is specified, then the mismatches in active and reactive powers, P & Qi respectively are given by i

Pi = Pi sp Pi Qi = Qisp Qi
where P i
sp

& Qisp are the specified active & reactive powers

sp sp

at node i , respectively. When node i is a PV node, the magnitude of the voltage, Vi & the active power P , the i reactive power Qi , at i are specified. The mismatch in voltage magnitude at node i can be defined as
sp

Vi = Vi sp Vi

and the active power mismatch is given in equation 3. Vi is the calculated nodal voltage at PV node i and is given by

Vi = Ei2 + Fi 2

The unknown variables in this problem are: first, the voltages at the PQ nodes; and secondly the real & imaginary parts of the voltages at the PV nodes and the reactive powers of the generators connected to the PV nodes. It is required to determine the values of the variables such that the mismatches in (3)-(5) are zero.

j =1

Pi = Ei

(Gij E j Bij Fj ) + Fi

(Gij Fj Bij E j ) (Gij F j Bij E j )

(1) (2)

(3) (4)

(5)

(6)
Fig.1.The above sketch shows how real ants find a shortest path. A) Ants arrive at a decision point. B) Some ants choose the upper path and some the lower path. The choice is random. C) Since ants move at approximately constant speed, the ants which choose the lower, shorter, path reach the opposite decision point faster than those which choose the upper, longer, path. D) Pheromone accumulates at a higher rate on the shorter path. The number of dashed lines is approximately proportional to the amount of pheromone deposited by ants.

nest. While walking from food sources to the nest and vice versa, ants deposit on the ground a chemical substance called pheromone, forming in this way a pheromone trail. The sketch shown in the Fig.1. gives a

general idea how real ants find a shortest path. Ants can smell pheromone and, when choosing their path, they tend to choose, in probability, paths marked by strong pheromone concentrations. The pheromone trail allows the ants to find their way back to the food by their nest-mates.

where ij is the quantity per unit of length of trail substance (pheromone in real ants) laid on edge ( i , j ) by the kth ant between time t and t + n; it is given by

Let bi(t) (i = 1, . . . , n) be the number of ants in town i at time t and let m = bi(t) be the total number of ants. Each ant is a simple agent with the following characteristics: It chooses the town to go with a probability that is a function of the town distance and of the amount of trail present on the connecting edge; To force the ant to make legal tours, transitions to already visited towns are disallowed until a tour is completed (this is controlled by a tabu list); When it completes a tour, it lays a substance called trail on each edge (i, j) visited. Let

p ikj =

k a ll o w e d k

ij (t ) be the intensity of trail on edge (i, j) at time t. Each

ant at time t chooses the next town, where it will be at time t + 1. Therefore, if we call an iteration of the AS algorithm the m moves carried out by the m ants in the interval (t, t + l), then every n iterations of the algorithm (which we call a cycle) each ant has completed a tour. At this point the trail intensity is updated according to the following formula ij (t + n) = . ij (t ) + ij (8) where is a coefficient such that (1 - ) represents the evaporation of trail between time t and t + n,
ij

and are where allowedk = {N-tabuk} and where parameters that control the relative importance of trail versus visibility. Therefore the transition probability is a trade-off between visibility (which says that close towns should be chosen with high probability, thus implementing a greedy constructive heuristic) and trail intensity at time t (that says that if on edge (i, j) there has been a lot of traffic then it is highly desirable, thus implementing the autocatalytic process). To solve any optimization problem, the value of objective function will be taken in place of Lk, Pij is decision parameter to take movement from one state to another state. The stepwise algorithm of the ant colony optimization is given below. STEPWISE ALGORITHM OF ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION

m k =1

k ij

(9)

The ant-cycle algorithm is simply stated as follows. At time zero an initialization phase takes place during which ants are positioned on different towns and initial values ij (0) for trail intensity are set on edges. The first element of each ant's tabu list is set to be equal to its starting town. Thereafter

The ant colony optimization problem is very much like traveling sales man problem. In traveling sales man problem, the salesman has to take the visit of all the towns in such a way that the length of the path remains as minimum as possible. In the same way, the ant has to reach their goal(food) in such a way that the length of the path traveled remains minimum. Therefore, ant colony optimization algorithm is explained below with help of example of traveling salesman problem. According to the TSP for a given set of n towns, the problem of finding a minimal length closed tour that visits each town once. We call dij the length of the path between towns i and j. An instance of the TSP is given by a graph (N, E), where N is the set of towns and E is the set of edges between towns. Now, this problem is solved using ant behavior to have the minimum length of the path according following steps called ant colony optimization algorithm.

= 0 otherwise where Q is a constant and Lk is the tour length of the kth ant. The coefficient must be set to a value < 1 to avoid unlimited accumulation of trail. In order to satisfy the constraint that an ant visits all the n different towns, we associate with each ant a data structure called the tabu list that saves the towns already visited up to time t and forbids the ant to visit them again before n iterations (a tour) have been completed. When a tour is completed, the tabu list is used to compute the ant's current solution (i.e., the distance of the path followed by the ant). The tabu list is then emptied and the ant is free again to choose. We define tabuk the dynamically growing vector which contains the tabu list, of the kth ant, tabuk the set obtained from the elements of tabuk, and tabuk(s) the sth element of the list (i.e., the sth town visited by the kth ant in the current tour). We call visibility ij the quantity 1 / dij. This quantity is not modified during the run of the AS, as opposed to the trail which instead changes according to the previous formula. We define the transition probability of kth ant to move from town i to town j is given below by equation (10).
[ i j ( t )] .[ ij ] [ ik ( t ) ] .[ ik ]

V. ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM

k ij =

Q Lk

If (i, j)

tour described by tabuk

(10)

every ant moves from town i to town j choosing the town to move to with a probability that is a function of two desirability measures. The first, the trail ij(t), gives information about how many ants in the past have chosen that same edge (i, j ) ; the second, the visibility ij says that the closer a town the more desirable it is. Obviously, setting a = 0, the trail level is no longer considered, and a stochastic greedy algorithm with multiple starting points is obtained. After n iterations all ants have completed a tour, and their tabu lists will be full; at this point for each ant k the value of Lk is

6. If (NC < NCmax ) and ( not stagnation behavior ) Then Empty all tabu lists Goto step 2 Else Print shortest tour Stop VI. ANT COLONY BASED LOAD FLOW

k Formally the ant-cycle algorithm [11] for load flow is as computed and the values ij ; are updated. Also, the follows: shortest path found by the ants (i.e., mink Lk, k = 1, . . . , m) is saved and all the tabu lists are emptied. This process is Initialize the no. of ants and the desired no. of iterations iterated until the tour counter reaches the maximum (user- (1) to be evaluated. The ant parameters have to be set defined) number of cycles NCMAX, or all ants make the same properly as it plays a significant role in the success of tour. We call this last case stagnation behavior because it each model. denotes a situation in which the algorithm stops (2) Each ant has to start from the starting node of the ASS. searching for alternative solutions. The transition from one stage state to the next is The ant-cycle algorithm is : given by the pseudo-random transition rule & by satisfying the transitional constraints of load flow. 1. Initialize: Calculate the Active Power, Reactive Power & Nodal Set t: := 0 { t is the time counter} Voltage by using (1), (2) and (6). Set NC: := 0 {NC is the cycles counter} (3) Whenever an ant takes a sub path from one state to the For every edge (i, j) set an initial value ij(t) = c for next state, pheromone updating is done locally (3), (4), trail intensity and = 0 , place the m ants on the n ij (5). Once the ant completes a successful tour, nodes. pheromone updating is done globally (7). 2. Set s := 1 { s is the tabu list index } (4) Whenever a successful tour is completed by an For k: := 1 to m do individual ant and if the mismatch (7) is found to be Place the starting town of the kth ant in tabuk(s) less than the maximum mismatch taken by the previous 3 Repeat until tabu list is full ants, then the present mismatch is captured or else the {This step will be previous maximum mismatch is retained. repeated (n-1) times} (5) Continue step 2 to step 4 till the no. of desired iteration Set s: := s+1 is completed flow solution for distribution systems, studies have been carried out in four different radial For k: := 1 to m do k distribution systems. The accuracy and computation Choose the town j to move to, with probability pij (t ) time of the developed method and the operation of according to equation (10) program is stopped. The optimal load flow solution is {At time t the kth ant is on town obtained after the successful completion of all i= tabuk(s-1)} iteration. Move the kth ant to the town j Insert town j in tabuk(s) VII. APPLICATION EXAMPLE 4. Move the kth ant from tabuk(n) to tabuk(1) compute The load flow ant algorithm proposed has been the length Lk of the tour described by the kth ant implemented using MATLAB 6.1 programming. To test the Update the shortest tour found validity of the load is compared with other methods Viz. For every edge ( i , j) ) NRLF method [3] & GA [6] and the results are shown in For k: = 1 to m do Table I and Table II respectively. In Table I, the accuracy of k tour described by tabuk ij = {Q/Lk } if ( i , j ) the developed method vis--vis the accuracies obtained by =0 otherwise other reported methods are shown for the 10-bus system. k From this table it is observed that the accuracy of the ij := ij + ij developed method is quite close to those obtained by other 5. For every edge (i , j) compute ij (t + n) according to reported methods. Similar results have also been obtained for other three distribution systems. The accuracy in case of other equation ij (t + n) = . ij (t ) + ij three distribution system is also found quite satisfactory like Set t = t + n in case of 10-bus system. Due to space limitation the results Set NC = NC +1 of other three systems for accuracy are not shown here. In Table II, the computation time of the developed method is For every edge ( i , j ) set ij = 0

compared with the computation time obtained by NRLF [3] and GA [6] methods. Table II shows that the computation time is faster than other methods. In addition to this, the developed method never fails to give the solution while the NRLF [2] fails to give the results.
TABLE I COMPARISON OF ACCURACY OF PROPOSED METHOD WITH OTHER METHOD (10-BUS SYSTEM)

Bus 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Developed 1.000000 0 0.929275 2.1 0.921887 3.2 0.932615 3.1 0.893918 3.5 0.863569 3.6 0.844915 3.1 0.887183 3.2 0.846995 3.5 0.916703 3.2

Method1[6] 1.000000 0 0.929271 2.1 0.921880 3.2 0.932595 3.1 0.8938894 3.5 0.863534 3.6 0.844896 3.1 0.887167 3.2 0.846985 3.5 0.916691 3.2

Method2[3] 1.000000 0.929264 0.921845 0.932582 0.893881 0.863516 0.844875 0.887156 0.846972 0.916782 0 2.1 3.2 3.1 3.5 3.6 3.1 3.2 3.5 3.2

Transaction on Power Apparatus and System, vol. 101, pp. 3648-3657, October 1982. [4] Stott, B., and Alsac, D.: Fast decoupled load flow, IEEE Trans, 1974, PAS-93, pp. 859-869. [5] K.P.Wong, A.Li and T.M.Y.Law Advanced constrained genetic algorithm load flow method IEE Pror-Gener. Trmsm. Distrib., Vol. 146, No. 6, November 1999, pp 609-616. [6] YIN, X.D., and Germany N.: Investigations on solving the load-flow problem by genetic algorithms, Electr. Power Syst. Res., 1991, 22, pp. 151-163. [7] Marco Dorigo and Luca Maria Gambardella, Ant Colony System: A Cooperative Learning Approach to the Traveling Salesman Problem [J], IEEE Transaction on Evolutionary Computation, 1(1):53~66, 1997. [8] Marco Dorigo, Luca Maria Gambardella, Ant colonies for the traveling salesman problem, Marco Dorigo, Luca Maria Gambardella, publication in BioSystems, 1997. [9] Marco Dorigo, Member, IEEE, Vittorio Maniezzo, and Albert0 Colorni Ant System: Optimization by a Colony of Cooperating Agents IEEE Transactions on systems, man & cybernetics-part-b cybernetics, vol 26, no. 1, February 1996,29. [10] Marco Dorigo, Thomas Sttzle. Ant Colony Optimization, pp.128-130. London, England, the MIT Press, 2004. [11] Hong-hao Zuo, Fan-lun Xiong, A New Approach of Ant Colony Algorithm and Its Proof of Convergence Proceedings of the 6th World Congress on Intelligent Controland Automation, June 21 - 23, 2006, Dalian, China.

TABLE II COMPARISON OF COMPUTATION TIME OF DEVELOPED METHOD WITH OTHER

METHODS

10-bus system time (s) Developed method Method 1 [3] Method 2 [6] 0.009 0.015 0.080

13-bus system time (s) 0.011 0.018 0.095

33-bus system time (s) 0.026 0.036 0.215

173-bus system time (s) 0.155 failure 0.927

VIII. CONCLUSION An ant colony optimization based load flow algorithm has been developed to solve the load flow problem. It is one kind of new heuristic biological modeling method which has the ability of parallel processing and global searching. The power balance requirement and voltage magnitude constraint satisfaction methods in the algorithm are presented and incorporated into the ant algorithm for solving load flow problem. The new algorithm can determine multiple load flow solutions and to determine the loadability limits of transmission system. The convergence of the system is quite faster & it can be used for the nonlinear devices, such as facts devices etc. The accuracy of the developed technique is quite close to those obtained by the other methods. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3]

Grainger J.J., and Stevenson, W.D. Jr.: Power system analysis (McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1994). Stott, B.: Review of load-flow calculation methods, IEEE Proc., 1974, 62, pp. 916-929.
S.C. Tripathy, G. Durga Prasad, O.P. Malik and G. S. Hope, Load flow solutions for ill conditioned power systems by Newton like method, IEEE