A double decomposition based coevolutionary algorithm for distributed multi-objective OPF solution

Due to the vast and complex nature of the power systems, the study of distributed solution to multi-objective OPF (MO-OPF) problem is vital. However, the existing distributed MO-OPF approaches are based on mathematical programming techniques. The tedious repetition of algorithmic executions is inevitable. Moreover, they can hardly solve the non-differential problem. In this paper, the coevolutionary multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA), combining the idea of decomposition, is introduced to solve the distributed MO-OPF problem. The decomposition first occurs on decision variables. After segmenting, multiple subpopulations can coevolve in a distributed manner under the support of a new proposed distributed fitness evaluation method. Further, an objective decomposition (OBD) method is applied to the proposed distributed MO-OPF approach. The problem is decomposed again based on objective functions. By this OBD method, the fitness assignment problem is effectively alleviated and a more extensively covered pareto front can be obtained. The experimental results on two systems of different scales first show the effectiveness of the proposed distributed approach and then demonstrate the excellence of the OBD method in large-scale system.