IEEE MELECON 2004, May 12-15,2004, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Ant-Colony Search-Based Minimum Losses

Reconfiguration of Distribution Systems
Enrico Carpaneto and Gianfranco Chicco
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica Industriale, Politecnico di Torino
corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy
E-mail: enrico.carpaneto@,polito.it,
- gianfranco.chicco@,polito.it

Abstract-This paper presents a new application of the Ant

Colony Search method to the minimum losses 11. DISTRIBUTION
SYSTEM CHARACTERISTICSAND
reconfiguration of distribution systems. The optimization OBJECTIVE FUNCTION
problem is formulated by taking into account the
operational constraints of the distribution systems. The For a distribution system with K nodes, B branches and
results of the proposed approach are compared to the ones S supply substations, let’s define the following sets:
obtained from other deterministic and heuristic methods K set of nodes
(iterative improvement, tabu search and simulated B set of branches
annealing) on two test systems.
S set of supply substations
Keywords - ant colony search, distribution systems, S“) set of the nodes belonging to the tree having as root
minimum losses, optimal reconfiguration, heuristic methods. the ’z supply substation;
FJ)set of nodes contained in the path from node j to the
I. INTRODUCTION supply substation z. The path FJ) is empty if n o d e j
is not connected to the supply substation z through a
The Ant Colony Search (ACS) optimization was first
succession of closed branches;
introduced in 1991 [ l ] and has proven to be a powerful
tool for solving a large number of problems in different Bo) set of the branches directly connected to node j
(excluding the branch whose ending node belongs to
fields [2]. The ACS is based on the behavior of the ants P’ZJ’);
while searching for food. Each ant leaves a pheromone
trail on the path from nest to food. The pheromone FJ)set of the branches whose sending and ending nodes
belong to P”J)).
evaporates with time, so that the other ants can reach the
food by following the “shortest” paths marked with
strong pheromone quantities. Some ACS applications Each configuration of the distribution system is defined
recently proposed in the distribution system area concern by the states (open/closed) of the branches. Let’s call X
feeder restoration and optimum switch adjustments for the set of the radial system configurations. The reference
distribution system planning [3-51. configuration E X corresponds to the standards of
This paper proposes a new application of the Ant operation of the distribution system.
Colony Search algorithm to the optimal reconfiguration The distribution systems operation is constrained by
of distribution systems, with the objective of minimising structural and operating limits [6]. The first constraint
the distribution system losses in the presence of refers to maintaining the system configuration radial, i.e.,
operational constraints. The distribution systems are X E X. In addition, let’s consider the following limits, for
structurally weakly meshed, but are operated in radial
configuration by keeping a number of branches open. The
choice of the branches to open in order to minimise losses
..
node k E K
max node voltage magnitude v k - vkMAx _< o (1)
min node voltage magnitude Vk““ - vk I o
is a combinatorial problem with high degree of
complexity and several local minima. This problem has .
max phase-earth fault current I f - <0
-
(2)
(3)
been addressed by using various methods and heuristics,
such as iterative improvement, tabu search, genetic
. max 3-phase short-circuit current I F - ITMM
I O (4)
algorithms and simulated annealing [6-131. However, by and the thermal current rating limit for branch b E B:
definition no method guarantees to find the global 8 1;’ - I f , M A x 2 0 (5)
optimum in finite time or number of iterations, so that
searching efficient alternative heuristics is still a The objective function is given by the total power
challenging task. losses PToT(X)in the distribution system:
Section I1 of the paper illustrates the characteristics of
the distribution systems and formulates the objective
function. Section I11 deals with the application of the where Rb is the branch resistance and l b is the magnitude
ACS algorithm to the minimum losses reconfiguration of of the current flowing through the branch b E B. The
distribution systems. Section IV compares the results of
the ACS method to those obtained from other methods. constrained minimisation, with f ( X ) = P7” ( X ) , is:

0-7803-8271-4/04/$20.00 02004 IEEE 97 1

min f(X) (7) W maximum number of cycles without loss
xex reductions
subject to (1)-(5). a exponent for pheromone update (local rule)
Alternatively, it is possible to introduce the penalty
factors pv, pefi pScand plh for each constraint (1)-(5). Each p exponent for the branch-related term (local rule)
penalty factor is null if the corresponding constraint is not p pheromone evaporation rate
violated and positive if it is violated. The resulting 6 pheromone amplification factor
penalised objectivefunction is: CO initial pheromone quantity
r
The global structure of the algorithm is the following:
input data
initialisation
o set cycle counter h = 0;
o set counter of cycles without loss reductions w = 0;
set Xhe.vt = (0) = X ( 0 ) ;
o set initial pheromone Ch(O) = CO,b E B
and the optimisation problem becomes
external cycle (while w < W)
min
xex T(X) (9)
{ update cycle counter, h = h + 1

111. APPLICATION
OF THE ANT COLONY SEARCH METHOD
TO THE MINIMUM LOSSES&CONFIGURATION set = 1, bE B
A. Overall structure of the proposed ACS algorithm send ants cycle, v = 1 , .. .,N
The proposed implementation of the ACS algorithm { build network cycle, i = 1, . .., K-S
adopts a constructive procedure that intrinsically ensures
that the configurations obtained during the construction { create the list of candidate nodes L'h*""'
process are radial. The algorithm is based on multiple add branch (see Section 1II.B)
cycles. Initially all branches are associated to the same } loop (build network cycle)
quantity of pheromone. During each cycle, several ants
are sent to build a radial configuration (one for each ant) compute the objective function T ( X ( h , " ) ) ;
starting from the S supply substations. The objective
function (8) is computed for each configuration. At the
end of each cycle, part of the pheromone evaporates. } loop (send ants cycle)
However, if a configuration improving the best objective
function found so far is detected during the cycle, the
)
if ?(Xbe.y/( h ) < -
f(Xbest then
closed branches of this configuration are marked by 0 update Xbest= X h e(hs 1[
increasing the quantity of pheromone associated to them
by using a pheromone amplification factor. The cycles o set =( for all the branches b closed in
continue until no improvement of the objective function the configuration X,,,;
(8) is detected for a specified number of cycles. In order to
prevent early stop of the procedure, a pre-defined number o ifh>Hosetw=w+1
of cycles is performed in any case. update pheromone for each branch b E 6:
In order to detail the algorithm, let's consider the
following parameters:
Ho number of the cycle for the stop criterion
activation } loop (external cycle)
N number of ants best configuration output
+cumulative values
B. The "add branch" procedure
The core of the proposed ACS algorithm is the procedure
used by each ant to build a radial system. This procedure
calls the function k = @ ( M ,V ) to implement the random
r extraction of the position k from a set of M positions, each
--- of which is associated to a value included in the set V =
{vm,rn = 1,...,M } . A step-wise cumulative curve is built,
position in which the width of each step is
C
1 2 3 4 m' M
Fig. 1. Random extraction of a position from a set of positions
associated to real values.

972
so that the values assumed by the curve lie inside the
range (0,l). A random number r is then extracted from a
uniform probability distribution in the interval (O,l),
resulting in the output position. A scheme of the
cumulative curve construction and of the selection
mechanism is shown in Fig. 1, where the random number r
extracted corresponds to the position #4, so that the output
of the procedure is k = 4.
Let's consider the h' cycle of the algorithm. When the
vth ant is building a radial system, the initial list L@,",l)
of
candidate nodes is formed, containin only the sup ly
substation nodes. Then, at the generic itFstep the list L("'*')
is updated to contain the nodes to which it is possible to
add a new branch, until the radial configuration has been
completed (after K-S steps). The details are now illustrated
by dropping the superscript (h,v,i) for the sake of clarity.
The first branch is added to the initial list of candidate
nodes by choosing at random the supply substation k =
@(S,{l, ...,l}). A local rule is then used to select the
branch to add in the case of multiple branches connected
to the selected supply substation. Assuming that the
extracted supply substation k is connected to J =
dim @ k ) ] branches, the choice of the branch to add to the
radial structure is performed by using the function j =
[ (<T:
CD J , L , q E B ( k ) ] ] , where
a4
r4 is the quantity of
pheromone associated to the branch q E 6 ( kand ) ay is a
value representing the branch q E B ( k )for the purpose of
branch selection (e.g., branch resistance). The importance
r
of the terms and a can be customised by varying the
values of the corresponding exponents a and p.
An intermediate step of the system construction is
shown in Fig.2, in which the continuous lines represent
branches already closed, while the dashed lines represent
branches that are physically connected to the nodes
already selected. At this point, the list L of candidate
nodes for continuing the construction of the network is
updated to include the nodes to which it is possible to
connect a new branch, i.e., nodes number 6, 7, 8, 11, 12,
14, 15 and 18. The other nodes shown are not included in
the list L for various reasons:
(i) terminal nodes (e.g., node #9 and node #IO);
(ii) all branches derived from the node have already been
connected (e.g., the supply substation nodes #1 to #4,
as well as nodes #5 and #17);
(iii) pairs of nodes only connected through a branch that
cannot be closed without forming a loop (e.g., node
#13 and node #16); in this case, the connecting
branch will remain open until the end of the network
construction.
For every node j included in the list L of candidate
nodes and supplied from the supply substation node z in
the current structure of the system, the quantity
h, = T a n , is computed. If a supply substation is not
me Y 2.1)
connected to any node, a default low value is assumed for
the corresponding h in order to represent the supply
substation for the purpose of the current selection (e.g., h
= 10.'). This low value increases the probability of
973
%. 6
.7 7 <..........
10
_...........
*..- .... .........
*..a. 1x
Fig. 2. Progressive construction of the radial network during the
evolution of the constructive algorithm
selection of the supply substation node. In fact, the node to
which the next branch will be connected is randomly
chosen by using the function m =
, in which the width of each
step of the cumulative curve is inversely proportional to
the sum of the resistance along the path from a candidate
node and the corresponding supply substation. For the
extracted node m, the choice of the branch to add to the
radial structure (e.g., branch h) is performed by using
again the function h = CD
At each cycle, the constructive procedure is
conditioned by the results of the previous cycles. In fact,
the quantity of pheromone marking each branch depends
on the pheromone added to the branches forming the
radial structures improving the objective function and on
the pheromone evaporation rate applied to each branch at
the end of the cycle.
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
The Ant Colony Search (ACS) has been compared to
other methods typically used for the minimum losses
reconfiguration of distribution systems, such as
deterministic Iterative Improvement (IT), Simulated
Annealing (SA) and Tabu Search (TS). The solution
provided by these methods depends on setting up the
corresponding parameters (for IT and TS) and also on the
randomness introduced during the solution process (for
SA and ACS). The IT and TS methods use the objective
function as in (7) and reject all solutions leading to
constraint violations, while the SA and ACS methods use
the penalised objective function as in (9). Two test
systems have been used (Table I). Data and parameters of
the test systems are available in [ 14,151.
TABLEI
TESTSYSTEMSDATA
Test System
total number of buses
total number of branches
number of open branches (radial configuration)
base case losses (MW) 0.1764 0.1 193
 Every method was able to find the same value of
minimum losses (0,1274 MW for the Test System A and
0.1 155 MW for the Test System B). The cycle evolution of
the ACS method w i t h N = 100, Ho= 10, W = 5, a = p = 1,
p = 0.1, Go = 10 and 5 = 2 is shown in Fig.3 for the Test
System A . Starting from the base case (not shown in the
figure), the objective function was improved at iterations
#1, 2 and 11. The corresponding pheromone
reinforcement is shown in Fig.4, in which the maximum
pheromone quantity (located at branches closed in the best
configurations progressively found) increases at these
iterations, while the minimum pheromone quantity,
located at branches never closed in the improving
configurations, always follows the decay imposed by the
pheromone evaporation rate.
s
al
o’i321 I
2 0.130 objective function during cycles
\.
L 0.128 -
Y REFERENCES
F
0 4 8 12
cycle number
Fig. 3 . Evolution of the solutions of the ACS method (Test System A).
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
cycle number
Fig. 4. Evolution ofthe maximum and minimum pheromone quantities.
A comparison among the solution speed of the methods
has been performed by running the methods 100 times on
a 233 MHz Pentium I1 PC, by setting up different
reasonable values of the method parameters. The
minimum losses solution was found by every method in
all cases. The Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of
the computation times is shown in Fig.5. The IT method
(not shown in the figure) has been run once, with a
computation time about 6 times lower than the TS
method, exhibiting excellent speed but the general
drawback of trapping into local minima. The current
version of the proposed ACS algorithm exhibits a higher
speed than the SA method. Table I1 shows the mean value
and the standard deviation of the number of configurations
analysed per second for the various method. The values
for the ACS method are relatively low, mainly because of
the wide use of random extractions during the network
construction. Refming the ACS method could improve its
Performance.
TABLEI1
NUMBEROF CONFIGURATION ANALYSED PER UNIT OF
COMPUTATION TIME(CONFIGURATIONS/SECOND)
Ant Simulated
Colonv
01 10 100
computation time (5)
Fig. 5. CDF of the computation time (Test System A).
V. CONCLUSIONS
A new ACS algorithm for minimum losses
reconfiguration of distribution systems has been proposed.
The tests showed its superior performance w.r.t. the
commonly used SA algorithm. Testing the ACS algorithm
on large real distribution systems is in progress, as well as
further developments aimed at increasing the
computational speed by testing alternative
implementations of the local rule. The related results will
be reported in the next future.
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