Application of Genetic Algorithms to Service Restoration in Distribution Systems.

Service restoration in distribution systems can be formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem to determine power sources for each load considering radial network constraints and power source limits. Until now, the problem has been considered using conventional methods, e.g., the branch-and-bounds method, expert system, neural networks, and fuzzy reasoning. Recently, Genetic Algorithms (GA) have been recognized as one of the efficient methods for solving large combinatorial optimization problems. The method can perform parallel search, and can more easily search optimal solutions. This paper presents an application of GA to service restoration in distribution systems. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated on a typical distribution system model. The result shows that the method can solve the problem, efficiently, and this tendency becomes dominant by increasing problem dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]