Gravitational Search Algorithm Based Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch for Voltage Stability Enhancement

In this article, an efficient and reliable optimization procedure based on the behaviors of swarm in nature, namely the gravitational search algorithm, is proposed for solving multi-objective optimal reactive power dispatch problems, which minimizes transmission loss while maintaining the quality of voltages. The gravitational search algorithm is based on Newton's law of gravity and interaction of masses. In the proposed algorithm, the searcher agents which are a collection of masses interact with each other using Newton's laws of gravity and motion. In order to investigate the performance of the proposed scheme, multi-objective optimal reactive power dispatch problems are solved. This new gravitational search algorithm method is tested on IEEE 57-bus and IEEE 118-bus power systems. Results obtained by the gravitational search algorithm are compared with two versions of genetic algorithms, three versions of differential evolution algorithms, four versions of particle swarm optimization algorithms and the seeker optimization algorithm It is observed from the test results that the proposed gravitational search algorithm approach converges to better solutions much faster than the earlier reported approaches.