Optimal reconfiguration of capacitor based radial distribution system using chaotic quasi oppositional chemical reaction optimization

This paper develops an improved version of the chemical reaction optimization (CRO) algorithm based on the opposition-based learning (OBL) strategy named quasi-oppositional CRO (QOCRO) for optimal reconfiguration of a power system to minimize power loss of the network. Furthermore, to avoid suboptimal solutions and to increase the convergence rate, chaotic behavior is mapped with QOCRO, which results in chaotic QOCRO (CQOCRO). The reconfiguration technique can minimize power loss up to a certain level. Further power loss reduction may be accomplished by locating the capacitor in the optimal location. To investigate the performance of the proposed CQOCRO, QOCRO, and CRO approaches, they are successfully implemented on two test systems, namely 33-bus and 69-bus radial distribution systems. Moreover, the numerical results are compared with other population-based optimization techniques like krill herd (KH) algorithm, oppositional krill herd (OKH) algorithm, and fuzzy approach. The computational results reveal that CQOCRO is superior to QOCRO, CRO, and other algorithms available in the literature in this domain. Finally, a convergence graph is given to identify the convergence superiority of CQOCRO.