Differential evolution based technique for reliability design of meshed electrical distribution systems

This paper describes a methodology for allocating repair times and failure rates to segments of a meshed distribution system using differential evolution (DE) technique. A cost function based on Duane’s reliability growth testing model has been proposed. Constraints on basic reliability indices i.e. failure rate, average interruption duration and average interruption duration per year have been accounted. The algorithm has been implemented on a meshed distribution system and results have been compared with those obtained using particle swarm optimization (PSO) and co-ordinated aggregation based PSO (CAPSO).

► Methodology to allocate failure rate and repair time for meshed distribution system.
► Differential evolution (DE) technique has been used and compared with PSO & CAPSO.
► Cost function using Duane’s reliability growth test model is proposed.
► It has been found that DE is computationally most efficient and easy to mechanize.