Medium-voltage distribution network expansion planning with gene-pool optimal mixing evolutionary algorithms

Medium-voltage distribution network expansion planning involves finding the most economical adjustments of both the capacity and the topology of the network such that no operational constraints are violated and the expected loads, that the expansion is planned for, can be supplied. This paper tackles this important real-world problem using realistic yet computationally feasible models and, for the first time, using two instances of the recently proposed class of Gene-pool Optimal Mixing Evolutionary Algorithms (GOMEAs) that have previously been shown to be a highly efficient integration of local search and genetic recombination, but only on standard benchmark problems. One GOMEA instance that we use employs linkage learning and one instance assumes no dependencies among problem variables. We also conduct experiments with a widely used traditional Genetic Algorithm (GA). Our results show that the favorable performance of GOMEA instances over traditional GAs extends to the real-world problem at hand. Moreover, the use of linkage learning is shown to further increase the algorithm's effectiveness in converging toward optimal solutions.