Application of ant colony algorithm for distribution system planning

Distribution system planning is a complicated combinatorial optimization problem and it is usually difficult to solve it properly by using classic optimization methods.The intelligent algo-rithms occurred in recent years have efficiently solved it,among which ACA(Ant Colony Algo-rithm)is a new type of simulated evolutionary algorithm.Many combinatorial optimization problems have been efficiently solved by ACA,in which the ants cooperate by exchanging the pheromone to show their intelligent behavior.According to the radial configuration of distribution system,a new ACA-based method for single-period distribution system planning is given.Because the radial che-cking procedure is avoided,the computational efficiency is greatly im proved.The example systems demonstrate the practicality and feasibility of the proposed method.