Optimum steady state load shedding using shuffled frog leaping algorithm to avert blackout in power systems during overload and generation contingencies

During generation and overload contingencies in a power system, the system voltage and frequency will decline due to the deficiency of real and reactive powers. Consequently cascaded failures may occur which will lead to complete blackout of certain parts of the power system. Load shedding is considered as the ultimate step of emergency control action that is necessary to prevent a blackout in the power system. This paper proposes a memetic meta-heuristic algorithm known as shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) to find a solution for the steady state load shedding problem presented here. The optimum steady state load shedding problem uses squares of the difference between the connected active and the reactive load and the supplied active and reactive power. The supplied active and reactive powers are treated as dependent variables modeled as functions of bus voltages only. The proposed algorithm is tested on IEEE 14 and 30 bus test systems. The viability of the proposed method is established by comparison with the other conventional methods presented earlier in terms of solution quality and convergence properties