A Review on Alleviation of Transmission Congestion by Nature Inspired Optimization Techniques 1

In an open electricity, when congestion occurs in a transmission time, it violates system security and system cost is increased. In a deregulated environment particularly, transmission congestion is one of the most prominent technical problems. Thus, while restructuring the power systems one of the important task of ISO/ TSO is to provide congestion free network. Generator rescheduling is the most popular technique to mitigate congestion in an open electricity market. Also , demand response technique and reactive power support are also being explored by many researchers. The present paper gives a preliminary review of implementation of above techniques using nature inspired optimization techniques. Well known metaheuristic optimization techniques such as ABC algorithm, Bacterial Foraging Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization have been implementation in the reviewed papers. The ABC algorithm is a metaheuristic approach inspired by intelligent foraging behavior of honey bee swarm. Recently emerged bacteria foraging mimics the foraging strategy of E. coli bacteria which tries to maximize the energy intake per unit time. Particle Swarm optimization is based on natural behavior of the particles or agents and it is quite efficient population based optimization procedure for multidimensional nonlinear complex problem. In generator rescheduling approach, firstly generators are chosen based on their generator sensitivity factor. Secondly optimization technique is used for rescheduling the generators.