Hybrid Fuzzy Adaptive Particle Swarm Optimization and Differential Evolution Algorithm for Distribution Feeder Reconfiguration

Network reconfiguration for loss reduction in a distribution system is a very important way to save the electrical energy. This article proposes a hybrid evolutionary algorithm to solve the distribution feeder reconfiguration problem. The algorithm combines a fuzzy adaptive particle swarm optimization with a differential evolution algorithm, called the fuzzy adaptive particle swarm optimization-differential evolution. The fuzzy adaptive particle swarm optimization includes two parts. The first part is fuzzy adaptive binary particle swarm optimization, which determines the status of tie switches (open or closed), and the second part is fuzzy adaptive discrete particle swarm optimization, which determines the sectionalizing switch number. In the proposed algorithm, due to the results of binary particle swarm optimization and discrete particle swarm optimization algorithms that highly depend on the values of their parameters (such as the inertia weight and learning factors), a fuzzy system is employed to adaptively adjust the parameters during the search process. The differential evolution algorithm is combined with the fuzzy adaptive particle swarm optimization algorithm to improve its performance. The proposed algorithm is tested on two distribution test feeders. The results of simulation show that the proposed method is very powerful and is guaranteed to obtain the global optimization.