An Improved MOEA/D Algorithm for the Solution of the Multi-Objective Optimal Power Flow Problem

The optimal power flow (OPF) is an important tool for the secure and economic operation of the power system. It attracts many researchers to pay close attention. Many algorithms are used to solve the OPF problem. The decomposition-based multi-objective algorithm (MOEA/D) is one of them. However, the effectiveness of the algorithm decreases as the size of the power system increases. Therefore, an improved MOEA/D (IMOEA/D) is proposed in this paper to solve the OPF problem. The main goal of IMOEA/D is to speed up the convergence of the algorithm and increase species diversity. To achieve this goal, three improvement strategies are introduced. Firstly, the competition strategy between the barnacle optimization algorithm and differential evolution algorithm is adopted to overcome the reduced species diversity. Secondly, an adaptive mutation strategy is employed to enhance species diversity at the latter stage of iteration. Finally, the selective candidate with similarity selection is used to balance the exploration and exploitation capabilities of the proposed algorithm. Simulation experiments are performed on IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 57-bus test systems. The obtained results show that the above three measures can effectively improve the diversity of the population, and also demonstrate the competitiveness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for the OPF problem.