Abstract
Optimal reactive power dispatch (ORPD) has a crucial impact to enhance safety, reliability, and economical operation of the electric power system. ORPD is a non-linear, non-convex and mixed variable problem, which has been solved by many researchers via different meta-heuristic algorithms during the last decade. In this work, a novel algorithm named sine-cosine algorithm (SCA) is utilized to solve ORPD problem by considering both dependent and independent control variable constraints. SCA has been tested and validated on standard 14, 30 and 57-bus power systems. To validate the superiority of proposed algorithm, the outcomes obtained through SCA are compared with recent published results attained through particle swarm optimization (PSO), modified Gaussian barebones teaching-learning based optimization (BBTLBO), ant bee colony optimization (ABCO), whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and backtracking search algorithms (BSA). The results attained using SCA show the improvement in the power losses minimization. Thus, with standard 14-bus system, the power losses are minimized from 0.04% to 4.78%. While, using standard 30-bus, the power losses are minimized from 0.4% to 3.4% and with standard 57-bus, power losses are reduced from 0.9% to 1.99%. Furthermore, a comparative analysis with 30 independent runs on the above-mentioned bus systems is performed to examine the functioning of the proposed method in terms of probability density function (PDF) and cumulative density function (CDF). For such analysis, well-known meta-heuristic algorithms such as PSO, WOA, differential evolution (DE) are compared with proposed SCA in solving the ORPD problem. The results of this analysis clearly show that proposed algorithm is robust, effective, and computationally easy in solving the ORPD problem compared to the existing meta-heuristic algorithms.