Kriging Assisted Surrogate Evolutionary Computation to Solve Optimal Power Flow Problems

This paper proposes a Kriging assisted strategy to expedite evolutionary computation for solving Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problems. First, two algorithms were developed–a Kriging Assisted Genetic Algorithm (KAGA) and a Kriging Assisted Particle Swarm Optimization (KAPSO) - and tested using unconstrained benchmark functions; it was found that both algorithms provided reliable and robust solutions. Accordingly, KAGA and KAPSO were selected and tested on the IEEE 30 and 118 bus systems for minimizing generation costs and active power losses. It is shown that the proposed KAPSO outperforms other algorithms, especially in terms of the computation time. In reference to the solution quality yielded by KAGA and KAPSO, the proposed Kriging assisted strategy offers a promising method to improve the performance of evolutionary based computation when solving OPF problems.