Large-scale optimal VAR planning by hybrid simulated annealing/genetic algorithm

This paper presents a fast near-global optimization technique called hybrid simulated annealing/genetic algorithm (HSAGA) for solving optimal VAR planning problems. The HSAGA incorporates simulated annealing into genetic algorithms to improve both performances at the same time. Therefore, it has the ability to find the near-global optimal solution in a finite time. Moreover, the solution time is much less than that of the conventional simulated annealing method. The HSAGA was applied to a practical power system, Taiwan Power System (Tai-Power System), with satisfactory results, and a comparison between HSAGA, simulated annealing, genetic algorithms and the hybrid partial gradient descent/simulated annealing method was also presented. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.