AN ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION BASED METHOD FOR POWER DISTRIBUTION NETWORK PLANNING

A new algorithm for distribution network expansion planning is presented. The algorithm is based on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) approach, which is a new general-purpose meta-heuristic and has been demonstrated to be effective in solving hard combinatorial optimization problems. In this paper, the problem of distribution network planning is formulated as a non-linear, mixed-integer programming problem considering both the fixed costs of distribution system expansion and the variable non-linear costs associated with the power losses. An ACO-based approach is then introduced in detail. Finally, a sample distribution system with 6 substations and 102 feeders is studied, which demonstrates the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method.