OPF with Environmental Constraints with Multi Shunt Dynamic Controllers using Decomposed Parallel GA: Application to the Algerian Network

Due to the rapid increase of electricity demand, consideration of environmental constraints in optimal power flow (OPF) problems is increasingly important. In Algeria, up to 90% of electricity is produced by thermal generators (vapor, gas). In order to keep the emission of gaseous pollutants like sulfur dioxide (SO2) and Nitrogen (NO2) under the admissible ecological limits, many conventional and global optimization methods have been proposed to study the trade-off relation between fuel cost and emissions. This paper presents an efficient decomposed Parallel GA to solve the multi-objective environmental/economic dispatch problem. At the decomposed stage the length of the original chromosome is reduced successively and adapted to the topology of the new partition. Two subproblems are proposed: the first subproblem is related to the active power planning to minimize the total fuel cost, and the second subproblem is a reactive power planning design based in practical rules to make fine corrections to the voltage deviation and reactive power violation using a specified number of shunt dynamic compensators named Static Var Compensators (SVC). To validate the robustness of the proposed approach, the algorithm proposed was tested on the Algerian 59-bus network test and compared with conventional methods and with global optimization methods (GA, FGA, and ACO). The results show that the approach proposed can converge to the near solution and obtain a competitive solution at a critical situation and within a reasonable time.