Load Forecasting Based Distribution System Network Reconfiguration-A Distributed Data-Driven Approach

In this paper, a short-term load forecasting approach based network reconfiguration is proposed in a parallel manner. Specifically, a support vector regression (SVR) based short-term load forecasting approach is designed to provide an accurate load prediction and benefit the network reconfiguration. Because of the nonconvexity of the three-phase balanced optimal power flow, a second-order cone program (SOCP) based approach is used to relax the optimal power flow problem. Then, the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is used to compute the optimal power flow in distributed manner. Considering the limited number of the switches and the increasing computation capability, the proposed network reconfiguration is solved in a parallel way. The numerical results demonstrate the feasible and effectiveness of the proposed approach.Comment: 5 pages, preprint for Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers 201

Quantifying the benefits of vehicle pooling with shareability networks

Taxi services are a vital part of urban transportation, and a considerable contributor to traffic congestion and air pollution causing substantial adverse effects on human health. Sharing taxi trips is a possible way of reducing the negative impact of taxi services on cities, but this comes at the expense of passenger discomfort quantifiable in terms of a longer travel time. Due to computational challenges, taxi sharing has traditionally been approached on small scales, such as within airport perimeters, or with dynamical ad-hoc heuristics. However, a mathematical framework for the systematic understanding of the tradeoff between collective benefits of sharing and individual passenger discomfort is lacking. Here we introduce the notion of shareability network which allows us to model the collective benefits of sharing as a function of passenger inconvenience, and to efficiently compute optimal sharing strategies on massive datasets. We apply this framework to a dataset of millions of taxi trips taken in New York City, showing that with increasing but still relatively low passenger discomfort, cumulative trip length can be cut by 40% or more. This benefit comes with reductions in service cost, emissions, and with split fares, hinting towards a wide passenger acceptance of such a shared service. Simulation of a realistic online system demonstrates the feasibility of a shareable taxi service in New York City. Shareability as a function of trip density saturates fast, suggesting effectiveness of the taxi sharing system also in cities with much sparser taxi fleets or when willingness to share is low.Comment: Main text: 6 pages, 3 figures, SI: 24 page

An Evolutionary Computational Approach for the Problem of Unit Commitment and Economic Dispatch in Microgrids under Several Operation Modes

In the last decades, new types of generation technologies have emerged and have been gradually integrated into the existing power systems, moving their classical architectures to distributed systems. Despite the positive features associated to this paradigm, new problems arise such as coordination and uncertainty. In this framework, microgrids constitute an effective solution to deal with the coordination and operation of these distributed energy resources. This paper proposes a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to address the combined problem of Unit Commitment (UC) and Economic Dispatch (ED). With this end, a model of a microgrid is introduced together with all the control variables and physical constraints. To optimally operate the microgrid, three operation modes are introduced. The first two attend to optimize economical and environmental factors, while the last operation mode considers the errors induced by the uncertainties in the demand forecasting. Therefore, it achieves a robust design that guarantees the power supply for different confidence levels. Finally, the algorithm was applied to an example scenario to illustrate its performance. The achieved simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades TEC2016-80242-PMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad PCIN-2015-043Universidad de Sevilla Programa propio de I+D+

A Memetic Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization Method for Environmental Power Unit Commitment

International audienceA multi-objective power unit commitment problem is framed to consider simultaneously the objectives of minimizing the operation cost and minimizing the emissions from the generation units. To find the solution of the optimal schedule of the generation units, a memetic evolutionary algorithm is proposed, which combines the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) and a local search algorithm. The power dispatch sub-problem is solved by the weighed-sum lambda-iteration approach. The proposed method has been tested on systems composed by 10 and 100 generation units for a 24 hour demand horizon. The Pareto-optimal front obtained contains solutions of different trade off with respect to the two objectives of cost and emission, which are superior to those contained in the Pareto-front obtained by the pure NSGA-II. The solutions of minimum cost are shown to compare well with recent published results obtained by single-objective cost optimization algorithms

Metaheuristic Optimization of Power and Energy Systems: Underlying Principles and Main Issues of the `Rush to Heuristics'

In the power and energy systems area, a progressive increase of literature contributions that contain applications of metaheuristic algorithms is occurring. In many cases, these applications are merely aimed at proposing the testing of an existing metaheuristic algorithm on a specific problem, claiming that the proposed method is better than other methods that are based on weak comparisons. This ‘rush to heuristics’ does not happen in the evolutionary computation domain, where the rules for setting up rigorous comparisons are stricter but are typical of the domains of application of the metaheuristics. This paper considers the applications to power and energy systems and aims at providing a comprehensive view of the main issues that concern the use of metaheuristics for global optimization problems. A set of underlying principles that characterize the metaheuristic algorithms is presented. The customization of metaheuristic algorithms to fit the constraints of specific problems is discussed. Some weaknesses and pitfalls that are found in literature contributions are identified, and specific guidelines are provided regarding how to prepare sound contributions on the application of metaheuristic algorithms to specific problems

Economic and Emission Dispatch using Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA)

This paper work present one of the latest meta heuristic optimization approaches named whale optimization algorithm as a new algorithm developed to solve the economic dispatch problem. The execution of the utilized algorithm is analyzed using standard test system of IEEE 30 bus system. The proposed algorithm delivered optimum or near optimum solutions. Fuel cost and emission costs are considered together to get better result for economic dispatch. The analysis shows good convergence property for WOA and provides better results in comparison with PSO. The achieved results in this study using the above-mentioned algorithm have been compared with obtained results using other intelligent methods such as particle swarm Optimization. The overall performance of this algorithm collates with early proven optimization methodology, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The minimum cost for the generation of units is obtained for the standard bus system

QUORUM SENSING BASED BACTERIAL SWARM OPTIMIZATION ON TEST BENCHMARK FUNCTIONS

The Bacterial swarm optimization is one of the latest optimization technique mainly inspired from the swarm of bacteria. This paper introduces an intelligent Quorum sensing based Bacterial Swarm Optimization (QBSO) technique for testing and validation. The quorum sensing senses the best position of the bacteria by knowing the worst place in search space. By knowing these positions, the best optimal solution is attained. Here in this proposed QBSO algorithm the exploration capability of the bacteria is well improved. The proposed technique is validated on the seven standard benchmark with unimodal and multimodal test function for its feasibility and optimality. The basic swarm based optimization algorithms such as Particle Swarm Optimization, Ant Colony Optimization, Biogeography Based Optimization, Simulated Bee Colony and conventional Bacterial Swarm Optimization with the standard parameters are simulated and associated with the proposed technique. The attained results evidently indicate that the proposed method outperforms from the considered optimization methods. Further, the proposed technique may apply to any engineering problems, especially for complex real time optimization problems

A survey of swarm intelligence for dynamic optimization: algorithms and applications

Swarm intelligence (SI) algorithms, including ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, bee-inspired algorithms, bacterial foraging optimization, firefly algorithms, fish swarm optimization and many more, have been proven to be good methods to address difficult optimization problems under stationary environments. Most SI algorithms have been developed to address stationary optimization problems and hence, they can converge on the (near-) optimum solution efficiently. However, many real-world problems have a dynamic environment that changes over time. For such dynamic optimization problems (DOPs), it is difficult for a conventional SI algorithm to track the changing optimum once the algorithm has converged on a solution. In the last two decades, there has been a growing interest of addressing DOPs using SI algorithms due to their adaptation capabilities. This paper presents a broad review on SI dynamic optimization (SIDO) focused on several classes of problems, such as discrete, continuous, constrained, multi-objective and classification problems, and real-world applications. In addition, this paper focuses on the enhancement strategies integrated in SI algorithms to address dynamic changes, the performance measurements and benchmark generators used in SIDO. Finally, some considerations about future directions in the subject are given