A novel codification for meta-heuristic techniques used in distribution network reconfiguration

In this paper, a new codification is proposed for various meta-heuristic techniques to solve the reconfiguration problem of distribution networks. The full potential of meta-heuristic algorithms can be exploited by their efficient codification using some engineering knowledge base. The distribution system reconfiguration problems are non-differentiable, mixed integer and highly complex combinatorial in nature. In addition, the radiality constraint typically increases the intricacy of the meta-heuristic evolutionary algorithms. The proposed codification is based upon the fundamentals of graph theory which not only restricts the search space but also avoids tedious mesh checks. The proposed codification is computationally efficient and guarantees to generate only feasible radial topologies all times. The proposed method has been tested on three different test distribution systems and the results are promising. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.