Reactive Power Optimization Using New Enhanced Whale Optimization Algorithm

Abstract

The standard Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) involves exploitation and exploration operations which require to be balanced for improved performance. This paper suggests a new enhanced WOA to improve the convergence speed and enhance the global optimum by balancing exploitation and exploration processes. New stages have been suggested at the hunting stages of the WOA to increase the exploitation capability. The performance of the modified algorithm has been analyzed on few commonly used test functions and Reactive Power Optimization (RPO) problem. The numerical studies have shown that the proposed WOA variant has outperformed other compared optimization algorithms in terms of global optimum and convergence speed.