Many areas in power systems require solving one or more nonlinear optimization problems. While analytical methods might suffer from slow convergence and the curse of dimensionality, heuristics-based swarm intelligence can be an efficient alternative. Particle swarm optimization (PSO), part of the swarm intelligence family, is known to effectively solve large-scale nonlinear optimization problems. This paper presents a detailed overview of the basic concepts of PSO and its variants. Also, it provides a comprehensive survey on the power system applications that have benefited from the powerful nature of PSO as an optimization technique. For each application, technical details that are required for applying PSO, such as its type, particle formulation (solution representation), and the most efficient fitness functions are also discussed.Index Terms-Classical optimization, particle swarm optimization (PSO), power systems applications, swarm intelligence.

The electricity and transportation industries are the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions on Earth. Renewable energy, mainly wind and solar, can reduce emission from the electricity industry (mainly from power plants). Likewise, nextgeneration plug-in vehicles, which include plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs) and EVs with vehicle-to-grid capability, referred to as "gridable vehicles" (GVs) by the authors, can reduce emission from the transportation industry. GVs can be used as loads, energy sources (small portable power plants), and energy storages in a smart grid integrated with renewable energy sources (RESs). Smart grid operation to reduce both cost and emission simultaneously is a very complex task considering smart charging and discharging of GVs in a distributed energy source and load environment. If a large number of GVs is connected to the electric grid randomly, peak load will be very high. The use of traditional thermal power plants will be economically and environmentally expensive to support the electrified transportation. The intelligent scheduling and control of GVs as loads and/or sources have great potential for evolving a sustainable integrated electricity and transportation infrastructure. Cost and emission reductions in a smart grid by maximum utilization of GVs and RESs are presented in this paper. Possible models for GV applications, including the smart grid model, are given, and results are presented. The smart grid model offers the best potential for maximum utilization of RESs to reduce cost and emission from the electricity industry.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are networks of distributed autonomous devices that can sense or monitor physical or environmental conditions cooperatively. WSNs face many challenges, mainly caused by communication failures, storage and computational constraints and limited power supply. Paradigms of computational intelligence (CI) have been successfully used in recent years to address various challenges such as data aggregation and fusion, energy aware routing, task scheduling, security, optimal deployment and localization. CI provides adaptive mechanisms that exhibit intelligent behavior in complex and dynamic environments like WSNs. CI brings about flexibility, autonomous behavior, and robustness against topology changes, communication failures and scenario changes. However, WSN developers are usually not or not completely aware of the potential CI algorithms offer. On the other side, CI researchers are not familiar with all real problems and subtle requirements of WSNs. This mismatch makes collaboration and development difficult. This paper intends to close this gap and foster collaboration by offering a detailed introduction to WSNs and their properties. An extensive survey of CI applications to various problems in WSNs from various research areasand publication venues is presented in the paper. Besides, a discussion on advantages and disadvantages of CI algorithms over traditional WSN solutions is offered. In addition, a general evaluation of CI algorithms is presented, which will serve as a guide for using CI algorithms for WSNs.

Abstract-Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are networks of autonomous nodes used for monitoring an environment. Developers of WSNs face challenges that arise from communication link failures, memory and computational constraints, and limited energy. Many issues in WSNs are formulated as multidimensional optimization problems, and approached through bio-inspired techniques. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a simple, effective and computationally efficient optimization algorithm. It has been applied to address WSN issues such as optimal deployment, node localization, clustering and data-aggregation. This paper outlines issues in WSNs, introduces PSO and discusses its suitability for WSN applications. It also presents a brief survey of how PSO is tailored to address these issues.

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