Security-constrained optimal power flow: A parallel self-adaptive differential evolution approach

This article proposes a parallel self-adaptive differential evolution with augmented Lagrange multiplier method (pSADE_ALM) to solve security-constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF) problems. The proposed pSADE_ALM is a modified version of sequential self-adaptive differential evolution (SADE_ALM) by exploiting parallel processing techniques to increase the search capability of the algorithm via PC cluster 3 x 2.8 GHz Pentium IV processors. An IEEE 30-bus system is investigated based on two cases, i.e., (1) the base-case optimal power flow (OPF) problems and (2) the SCOPF problems. The proposed pSADE_ALM shows very impressive results compared with others, e.g., gradient-based methods, tabu search-based methods, evolutionary programming (EP), improved evolutionary programming (IEP), and SADE_ALM.