A statistics-based genetic algorithm for quality improvements of power supplies

This paper presents a new statistics-based evolutionary algorithm to improve the qualities of power supplies, in which operational costs and the stability of the power supply are optimised to provide a highly smooth but low-cost power supply service to customers. The proposed method is incorporated with the characteristics of the stochastic method, evolutionary algorithm and a more systematical statistical method, orthogonal design. It intends to compensate for the built-in randomness of the stochastic method and, at the same time, overcome the limitations of local search methods that are not suitable for handling multi-optima problems. Case studies on the WSCC 9-bus and New England 39-bus systems indicate that the proposed approach outperforms the existing method in terms of robustness in solution and convergence speed while the solution quality that can offer a more stable and cheaper power supply to customers is achieved. [Received 03 July 2008; Revised 29 December 2008; Revised 20 January 2009; Accepted 26 January 2009]