86 International Journal of Energy Optimization and Engineering, 2(3), 86-101, July-September 2013

Hybridization of Biogeography-
Based Optimization with
Differential Evolution for Solving
Optimal Power Flow Problems
Provas Kumar Roy, Department of Electrical Engineering, Dr. B. C. Roy Engineering
College, Durgapur, West Bengal, India
Dharmadas Mandal, Department of Electrical Engineering, Birbhum Institute of Engineering
and Technology, Suri, West Bengal, India

ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to evaluate a hybrid biogeography-based optimization approach based on the hy-
bridization of biogeography-based optimization with differential evolution to solve the optimal power flow
problem. The proposed method combines the exploration of differential evolution with the exploitation of
biogeography-based optimization effectively to generate the promising candidate solutions. Simulation ex-
periments are carried on standard 26-bus and IEEE 30-bus systems to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed
approach. Results demonstrated that the proposed approach converged to promising solutions in terms of
quality and convergence rate when compared with the original biogeography-based optimization and other
population based optimization techniques like simple genetic algorithm, mixed integer genetic algorithm,
particle swarm optimization and craziness based particle swarm optimization.

Keywords: Biogeography-Based Optimization, Differential Evolution, Optimal Power Flow, Power System
Optimization, Valve Point Effect

1. INTRODUCTION constraints. OPF problem has been rigorously

The optimal power flow (OPF) proposed by
“Carpentier (1979)”, is an optimization tool
through which the electric utilities strive to de-
termine secure operating conditions for a power
system. The OPF solution aims to optimize a
selected objective function via optimal adjust-
ment of the power system control variables,
while satisfying various equality and inequality
studied over the past few decades. Many opti-
mization techniques have emerged so far and
have been applied to solve the problem. In the
past, a wide variety of conventional optimization
techniques such as Newton method “Monticelli
and Liu (1992)”, linear programming “Stott,
Marinho and Alsac (1979)”, dynamic program-
ming “Xie and Song (2001)”, and interior
point methods “Wei, Sasaki, Kubokawa and

DOI: 10.4018/ijeoe.2013070106

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 International Journal of Energy Optimization and Engineering, 2(3), 86-101, July-September 2013 87
Yokoyama (1998)” have been developed to
solve OPF problem. Generally, these techniques
suffer due to algorithmic complexity, insecure
convergence, and sensitiveness to initial search
point, etc. Usually, these methods rely on the
assumption that the fuel cost characteristic of
a generating unit is a smooth, convex function.
However, in practical system, it is not possible,
or appropriate, to represent the unit’s fuel cost
characteristics as convex function. This situa-
tion arises when valve-points non-linearities
effect of thermal generating units and prohibited
operating zones constraints are considered.
Therefore, new optimization methods are re-
quired to deal with these difficulties.
In recent years, many heuristic algorithms,
such as Tabu search (TS) “Abido (2002)”,
genetic algorithms (GA) “Devaraj and Yeg-
nanarayana (2005)”, evolutionary programming
(EP) “Sood (2007)”, particle swarm optimiza-
tion (PSO) “Roy, Ghoshal and Thakur (2009)”,
differential evolution (DE) “Liu and Lampinen
(2005); Varadarajan and Swarup (2008)”, artifi-
cial bee colony (ABC) “Kwannetr, Leeton and
Kulworawanichpong (2010)”, bacteria foraging
optimization (BFO) “Tang, Li and Wu (2008)”,
biogeography-based optimization (BBO) “Roy,
Ghoshal and Thakur (2010a); Roy, Ghoshal and
Thakur (2010b)” and gravitational search algo-
rithm (GSA) “Bhattacharya and Roy (2012);
Roy, Mandal and Bhattacharya (2012)” have
successfully proved their capabilities in solving
the OPF problem, without any restrictions on the
shape of the cost curves. The results reported
are promising and encouraging for further re-
search in this direction. Moreover, many hybrid
algorithms “Ongsakul and Bhasaputra (2002);
Chunjie, Huiru and Chen (2010)” have been
introduced to enhance the search efficiency.
DE proposed by R. Storn and K. Price
“Storn and Price (1995)” is one of the latest evo-
lutionary optimization algorithms. It is a simple
but powerful population-based stochastic search
technique for solving global optimization prob-
lems. Its effectiveness and efficiency have been
successfully demonstrated in many application
fields. Like other evolutionary algorithms, two
fundamental processes drive the evolution of a
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DE population: exploration of different regions
of the search space, and the selection process,
which ensures the exploitation of previous
knowledge about the fitness landscape. Practi-
cal experience, however, shows that DE may
occasionally stop proceeding toward the global
optimum level and may converge to a local
optimum or any other point. This situation is
usually referred to as premature convergence,
where the population converges to some local
optima of a multimodal objective function,
losing its diversity. This is due to the lack of
exploitation ability of the original DE algorithm.
BBO “Simon (2008)”, is a new global
optimization algorithm based on the theory of
biogeography, which is the study of the geo-
graphical distribution of biological organisms.
The feature of BBO is like other biology-based
algorithms, such as GA and PSO. However,
BBO also has some unique features among
biology-based algorithms. One unique char-
acteristic of BBO is that the original popula-
tion is not discarded after each generation. It
is rather modified by probabilistic migration
(immigration and emigration) operation. This
new technique has already proven itself a
worthy optimization technique “Roy, Ghoshal
and Thakur (2010a); Roy, Ghoshal and Thakur
(2010b); Simon (2008)” compared to other
existing techniques. However, since BBO is a
new global optimization algorithm, there are
some open research questions that need to be
addressed, such as the migration operator of
BBO lacks the exploration ability and cannot
improve the diversity of the population.
In order to utilize the exploration ability of
DE and the exploitation capability and BBO,
a hybrid technique combining BBO with DE,
referred to as hybrid biogeography based opti-
mization with differential evolution (HDBBO),
is being proposed for solving OPF problems.
Similar concept is introduced by Gong et al.
“Gong, Cai and Ling (2010)” and later, it is
applied to solve economic load dispatch (ELD)
problem “Bhattacharya and Chattopadhyay
(2010)”. But this combined application of the
BBO and DE concept for solving the OPF
problem, has not been applied so far. The
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