Optimal power flow with distributed energy sources using whale optimization algorithm

Renewable energy generation is increasingly attractive since it is non-polluting and viable. Recently, the technical and economic performance of power system networks has been enhanced by integrating renewable energy sources (RES). This work focuses on the size of solar and wind production by replacing the thermal generation to decrease cost and losses on a big electrical power system. The Weibull and Lognormal probability density functions are used to calculate the deliverable power of wind and solar energy, to be integrated into the power system. Due to the uncertain and intermittent conditions of these sources, their integration complicates the optimal power flow problem. This paper proposes an optimal power flow (OPF) using the whale optimization algorithm (WOA), to solve for the stochastic wind and solar power integrated power system. In this paper, the ideal capacity of RES along with thermal generators has been determined by considering total generation cost as an objective function. The proposed methodology is tested on the IEEE-30 system to ensure its usefulness. Obtained results show the effectiveness of WOA when compared with other algorithms like non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), grey wolf optimization (GWO) and particle swarm optimization-GWO (PSO-GWO).