On spanning-tree recombination in evolutionary large-scale network problems - Application to electrical distribution planning

We report key algorithms involved in the recombination-based evolutionary software developed for planning electrical distribution networks. We focus on the dimensionality problem of large-scale networks and on the specificities of its search space. We report the difficulties In handling topology constraints and present both the genotype and the operators to overcome such difficulties. The operators are designed to process meaningful topological information as genotype substructures and to turn radiality and connectivity into genetic transmissible properties. First, a theoretical example is presented to illustrate important differences between other common approaches and the approach taken. Then, a real electrical industry application is presented to illustrate the ability of the approach to handle large-scale distribution-network problems.