A comparative study of metaheuristic optimization approaches for directional overcurrent relays coordination

In this paper, a comparative study of different meta-heuristic optimization approaches, which had been proposed in the literature for directional overcurrent relay coordination (DOCRs), is presented. Towards this goal, five most effective meta-heuristic optimization approaches such as genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), differential evolution (DE), harmony search (HS) and seeker optimization algorithm (SOA) have been considered. The performances of these optmization methods have been investigated on several power system networks of different sizes. The comparative performances of these methods have been studied by executing each method 100 times with the same initial conditions and based on the obtained results, the best meta-heuristic optimization method for solving the coordination problem of directional overcurrent relays is identified.