Application of the Ant Colony System for
Optimum Switch Adjustment
Jen-Hao Teng, IEEE Member and Yi-Hwa Liu
Abstract: In this paper, a co-operative agent algorithm, the
ant coloriy system, for optimum switch adjustments is
proposed. Switch adjustment is one of the most important
tools for distribution automation, since it can improve the
system reliability and reduce the interruption costs without
additional capital investments. The formulation of switch
adjustment is a combinatorial optimization problem with
non-linear and non-differential objective function. In this
paper we choose the ant colony system to solve the problem
since the ant colony system has the characteristics o f
positive feedback, distributed computation and the use of a
constructive greedy heuristic. One of the main goals o f the
paper is to investigale the applicability of the ant-colony-
system-bwed algorithm in the power system optimizations.
Test results show that the proposed ant-colony-system-
based algorithm can offer an optimum solution for switch
adjustment:
Index Terms: Ant Colony System, Customer Interruption
Cost, Reliability Improvement, Switch Adjustment,
Distribution Automation
1. INTRODUCTION
Many optimization problems in power systcms are
combinatorial optimization problems; they are difficult
to he solved by traditional linear or nonlinear
programming methods due to its non-linear and non-
differentiable characteristics. Therefore, many heuristics
have been proposed that attempt to find a near-optimum
solution for large power systems within reasonable time.
Such heuristic algorithms include Ant Colony System
(ACS), evolution strategies, genetic algorithms,
simulated annealing, neural networks, tabu search, and
threshold accepting etc.
Among these methods, ACS was proposed in the
early nineties as a novel heuristic approach for the
solution of combinatorial optimization problems [1-5].
The ACS, originally introduced in p, 21, is a new
cooperative search algorithm inspired by the behavior of
real ants, since ants are able to find good solutions to
shortest path problems between a food source and their
home colony. The characteristics of ACS algorithm
include positive feedback, distributed computation and
the use of a constructive greedy heuristic. Positive
feedback makes sure for rapid search of global solution;
distributed computation avoids prematurc convergence
and constructive greedy heuristic helps find acceptable
solutions as soon as possible. These properties are
This work was sponsored by National Science Council, Taiwan. under
research grant NSC 90-2213-E-214-052-.
fen-Haa Teng is with Department of Electrical Engineering, I-Shou
Un bersity. Kaahsiung, Taiwan.
Yi-Hwa Liu is with Power Electronic. Lab., Electra-rechnoloa
Division, Energy Resource Labs., ITRl.
0-7803-7525-4/02/$17.00 0 2002 IEEE. 75 1
counterbalanced by the fact that, for some applications,
the ACS can outperformother heuristics [4-81. ACS has
been applied to many different optimization problems
such as quadratic assignment, graph sequential ordering
and single machine tardiness and in the field of control
systems, communication systems and power systems etc.
For most of those applications, the results show that the
ACS based approach can outperform other heuristic
methods. In power systems, ACS has hccn applied to
solve the optimum generation scheduling problems [7, 81.
[7] used the ACS to find the best results of the short-term
generation scheduling problem. [8] employed ACS to
solve the hydroelectric generation scheduling. In this
paper, authors will integrated the ACS into distribution
system planning.
The distribution system is an important part of the
total electrical supply system, as it provides the final link
between a utility's bulk transmission system and its
customers. It has been reported that 80% of all customer
interruptions occur due to failures in the distribution
system. In order to improve customer service reliability,
Distribution Automation (DA) is applied on the
distribution feeders to achieve significant and immediate
improvement in reliability and service to the utility
customers. Switches are utilized comprehensively in
primary distribution systems for various applications,
such as, to improve reliability, isolate a fault, reconfigure
and restore the network and hence reduce the
interruption cost after a fault. The selection of an
adequate number of switches and their locations is a
difficult task in distribution system planning [9-14].
Moreover, after the switches were installed in the
distribution networks and operated for few years, the
existent switches need to he adjusted according to the
load growth and network expansion. By adjusting the
existent switches, the distribution system reliability can
be improved and the feeder interruption cost can be
reduced. The formulation of switch adjustment is a
combinatorial optimization problem with non-linear and
non-differential objective function. Teng and Lu have
proposed some useful strategic formulations for switch
adjustment in [IS]. In this paper, the proposed method
integrates the ACS algorithm into the optimum switch
adjustment problem. Test results demonstrated the
performance ofthe proposed method.
2.BASlC CONCEPTS OF ACS ALGORITHM
The main concepts and procedures o f ACS are
introduced in this section. ACS simulates the behavior of
real ants [I-61. Real ants are ablc to find the shortest path
between a food source and their home colony. They also
have the ability to adapt the environment changcs, for
example, finding a new shortest path once the old one is
no longer feasible due to a new obstacle. The studies of
real ants reveal that they communicate via pheromones.
Ant deposits a certain amount of pheromone when it
walks. An ant tends to choose a path positively
correlated to the pheromone intensity of foundtsiak. The
pheromone trail evaporates over time, i.e., it looses
intensity if other ants lay down no more pheromone. If
many ants choose a certain path and lay down
pheromones, the intensity of the trail increases and thus
this trail attracts more and more ants. The process can
easily be illustrated by Fig. I . Fig. I(a) shows that ants
are moving in a straight line, which connects a food
source and their home colony. Once an obstacle appears
in the straight line as shown in Fig. l(h), the environment
changes and the ants that are just in the front cannot
continue following the pheromone trail. Therefore, those
ants will choose the paths randomly; it means that the
ants have same probability to choose the path to point C
or D.Later on, those ants choose the shorter path around
the obstacle will move faster than the ants choose the
longer path. The pheromones on the shorter path will be
reconstructed more rapidly and this will cause more ants
to choose the shorter path. After all, all ants will choose
the same path due to the positive feedback. The full
procedures of the ACS algorithm can be summarized as:
B E E
tA
A A
(a) (b) (C)
Fig. I : An Example of ACS
Initialize the ACS-based optimization problem.
Construct searching space including the states and
stages of the optimization problem and set the ant
number and the parameters of the ACS algorithm.
Find the paths for the ant dispatch. Each ant
chooses the states to complete a tour according to a
probabilistic state transition tule. Ants prefer to
move to states, which are connected by shorter
edges with a high amount of pheromone. Once all
ants have finished their tour, some fitness functions
of the optimization problem can be used to
evaluate the performance of the ants.
Update the pheromones o f edges between each
stage. The pheromone trail of each edge will
evaporate over time, i.e., it looses intensity if no
more pheromone is laid down by other ants. For
those edges that ants traveled in this iteration, their
pheromone intensity can be updated by the
pheromone-updating rule. Global and local
pheromone updating rules are generally used to
152
update the pheromone trail.
4. Define the Convergence criteria of the problem.
This process is iterated until the tour counter
reaches the maximum pre-defined number of
iterations or all ants make the same tours.
The full procedure is problem-dependent; it is
difficult to find a single searching space, configuration,
consideration and parameters of ACS algorithm that can
satisfy every optimization problem. It needs to take the
specific factors of each optimization problem into
account to deign a good ACS algorithm.
3. FORMULATION DEVELOPMENTS
Problem Formulation
Reliability worth assessment is currently receiving
considerable attention as it provides an opportunity to
incorporate the costs or losses incurred by utility
customers as results of power failure [13-151. In this
paper, we try to integrate the reliability worth to obtain
the optimum locations for the switch adjustment. The
objective function of the optimum switch adjustment
problem is to minimize the interruption costs for
distribution feeders by rearranging the existent switches.
In a distribution feeder the group of line segments
between adjacent switches or circuit breakers (CB) is
defined as a Section. Each Section will have several load
points and the equivalent load of a Section is obtained by
summing individual loads within the Section. The
Customer Interruption Cost (CIC) of the feeder can be
expressed as
where n is the number of switches. li , Li and 2, are
the length, load and outage rate (failurekm-year) of
Section i . C, is the per kilowatt interruption cost ($/kW)
of load at Section j due to an outage at Section i. C , can
be expressed as
f C ( z j )f ,i ( x j ) are the load percentage and the
interruption cost functions of residence, commercial and
industry customers respectively. y, is the duration of
service interruption ofSection j for a fault at Section i . In
computing y, s , the long-term historical data including
average time required for feeder fault detection, isolation
and restoration needs to be collected. Besides, the feeder
topology, switch location, failure rate, switch operation
(manual or automatic) time and load transfer capability
all need to be taken into account.
 Solution Technique
If the location of the switch between Section i and
Section i+l was adjusted, then the CIC before and after n
adjustments can he expressed as (3) and (4), respectively.

,It1 "+I
c I c ( y )= C I C , +AI,(( ccU!,)+ciiLi +CiitlLj+])
m=l j=l
~+i.i+l jti,i+l
ntl
(3)
+ A+lk+l(( cCitlj Lj )+C,+I,L,+
j=l
Ci+li+l
&+I)

j+i,i+l
"+I "+I
CIC(b)= C I C , +AI,:((CcijLj)+c,:iL;+Ci;+]L;.+])
m=l j=l
",*<i+l jti,i+l
"+I (4)
+ A + I L(( cc.,
j =I
j Lj )+ C;.+,,L:+C,:+li+lL;+l)
jiijtl

where li , 1,; and i,,, , Ii', are the length of Section i

4 b
and i+l before and after the switch adjustment. Li , Li Number of Candidate Locations
Fig. 2: The Searching Space for the Switch Adjustment
and Li+], ii+]
are the load of Section i and i+l before
and after the switch adjustment. C , and C, are per Fig. 2 is the searching space of the switch
kilowatt interruption cost of load at Section j due to an adjustment problem. All possible candidate locations for
outage at Section i before and after the switch switch rearrangements are the states in the searching
adjustment. space for one stage. The number of stages is equal to the
number of switches. Each ant will start its tour at the
The CIC variation before and after switch adjustments home colony and stop at the destination. Ant chooses the
can be written as state to go to with a probability that is a function of the
amount of pheromones present on the connecting edges
of each state. When an ant moves from one stage to the
ACIC=CIC(*)-CIC("
next stage, the state of each stage will be recorded in the
= A[l;(c;iL; +c;i+l
L)+J -li(ciiLi +Cii+lLi+l)]
(5)
location list. After the tour is completed, its location list
is used to compute the ant's current solution, i.e., the CIC
+ A+l~li'+,(ci'+liL;
+ ci'+,i+lL;.+,) based on this location list The location list is then
-1i+l(ci+liLi + Ci+li+lLi+I)l emptied and the ant is free again to choose a new trail

From (S), it can be seen that we can improve the Let T Y ( N ) be the pheromone intensity of trail on
service reliability and reduce customer outage cost
edge (i. J) between stage x and y at iteration N. Note that
without additional capital investments if the adjustment
stage x a n d y are the consecutive stages. Each ant at state
is done properly. Especially, after the switches were
installed in the distribution networks and operated for
i of stage x chooses the next stage according to state
few years, the load distribution and network topology has transition rules. Different optimization problems can use
been changed, the switches need to be adjusted and the the different state transition rules. In this paper, we use
proposed method will be very helpful. This paper the following transition rule to give probability for an ant
to select its edge.
investigates the benefits of rearranging the existing
switches. For this purpose, the objective function of the
problem is

where ?J,yis the CIC reduction between stage x and y .

where R is the location list of the switches.
Due to its non-linear and non-differentiable
characteristics, the problem is difficult to be solved by
traditional linear o r nonlinear programming methods. In
this paper, an ACS-based algorithm is proposed to solve
the problem.
a and p are parameters that control the relative
importance of trail versus the CIC reduction between
stage x and y. Therefore the transition probability is a
trade-offbetween the CIC reduction and trail intensity. It
means that if the path has been a lot of traffic and larger
CIC reduction then it will have more probability to he
selected.

753
 ~
After this tour is finished a n t i will have its location list,
RI"', and fitting evaluation, CIC(R!"). At this point
all trail intensity can be updated according to the
following evaporation formula
q ( N + 1) = p . q (N)+s,;y,'O' (8)
where p is a coefficient such that ( I - p ) represents the
evaporation of trail after iteration N . ~j?'"' is a small
positive constant. The coefficient p must be set to a
value less than I to avoid unlimited accumulation of
trail.
The ant with best solution at this iteration can provide a
greater amount of pheromones to the edges of its location
list. For example, if ant k has the best solution in this tour,
then the pheromones of those edges in its location list
can be modified by
the number of switches and candidate
..
Fig. 3: The Computation Procedure of the Proposed Method
The computation procedure of the ACS-based
switch adjustment algorithm is shown in Fig 3. The
parameters that affect the computation of ACS algorithm
directly or indirectly including ant number, a, p , p
and Q. CL can affect the relative importance of the trail,
its value should be larger than zero. p affects the
754
relative importance ofthe CIC reduction between stage x
and y in our optimization problem. p is the trail
persistence and (1- p ) can be interpreted as trail
evaporation. Q is a constant value related to the quantity
of trail deposited by ants. Different parameters will
dcfinitely affect the performance of an ACS algorithm.
In this paper, we choose the following parameters: ant
n u m b e ~ 3 0 ; oc=l.0; p =1.0; p=0.7; and Q=5000000.
4. NUMERICAL RESULTS
The proposed algorithm was implemented with
Borland C++ language on a Pentium-111 PC. Several
feeders were tested, however, only the results of one
distribution feeder are repotted here due to limited space.
The test feeder is shown in Fig. 4. Each bus on the test
feeder is a candidate location for switch relocation.
Outage rate of the feeder is 4 failures per 100 miles per
year. Average repair time is 1.5 hrs and the average
duration to perform the necessary fault isolation,
switching and load transfer activities from substation and
neighboring feeders is 0.1 hr. Maximum feeder load
transfer capability from substation B, C and D are
800kW. Costs of energy not supplied are as those used in
[13, 151. The maximumiteration number is set as 100.
I:Switch
1 :Canadiate Location for Switch
to
....................
I I I I I I
M...
.................. i
........
...............
Fig. 4: One-LineDiagram of Test System
The best solution of each iteration and the CIC of
each ant at the final iteration are shown in Fig. 5 and 6,
respectively. From Fig. 5 , it can be seen that the ACS
based algorithm can be used to find the optimum location
list for switch adjustment. Fig. 6 shows that about 60%
of ants at the final iteration choose the same location list,
the other ants still try to find the best locations for the
switch adjustment. If the maximum iteration number is
set 500, then about 98% ants are choosing the same
location list, only 2% ants still try to find the global
optimum solution. The switch locations after
rearrangement are shown in Fig. 7 . Thc yearly CICs
before and after adjustments equal 20708 and 16336
USD, respectively. Test results also show that only
rearranging the existent switches can reduce customer
outage cost and improve service reliability.
 reasonable computation time. The parameters of ACS
algorithm will definitely affect the performance of the
..... II proposed method. However, the hasic ideas proposed in
..... L
...... I ?! II
I this paper need no modification. The relative strengths
and weaknesses o f the proposed method with respect to
those parameters including ant number, (x, p , p and
!...... V[
I Q, and the comparisons of the ACS based method with

..... L
c
..... . . . . . . . . . . . .
other heuristics will be discussed in the future works.

6. REFERENCES

[ I ] Dorigo, M.; Maniezzo, V.; Colorni, A., Ant system:

.-..-.-..
Fig. 5: The Best Solution of Each Iteration
.....
......
!
......
: ....
. . . . . . . . . .
I ~~
..-..
Fig. 6: The CIC of Each Ant at the Final Iteration
I algorithms, tabu search, and ant colonies for the quadratic
I:Switch
\ :Canadiate Location far Switch
Fig. 7: Switch Locations ARer Adjustment
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The formulation of switch adjustment problem is
a combinatorial optimization problem with non-linear
and non-diffcrential objective function. In this paper, we
used the ACS algorithm to solve the optimum switch
adjustment problem. It is difficult to find out a single
searching space, configuration, consideration and
parameters of ACS algorithm that can satisfy every
optimization problem. In this paper, we integrated the
ACS algorithm into the optimum switch adjustment
problem successfully. Test results shown that the ACS
algorithm can be used to find a good solution within
optimization by a colony of cooperating agents,
lEEE Transactions on Man and Cybernetics Systcms
Part B, Vol. 26 Issue: 1, Feb. 1996 pp. 29 -41
[21 Dongo, M.; Gamhardella, L.M., Ant colony system: a
cooperative learning approach to the traveling salesman
problem: IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary
Computation, Volume: 1 Issue: I , April 1997, pp. 53 -66.
[3] Smtzle, T.; Hoos, H., MAX-MIN Ant System and local
search for the traveling salesman problem, IEEE
International Conference on Evolutionary Computation,
1997, pp. 309-314.
[4] Dorigo, M.; Di Caro, G., Ant colony optimization: a
new meta-heuristic: Proceedings of the 1999 Congress
on Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 2, pp. 1470.1477
[5] Merz, P.; Freisleben, B., A comparison of memetic
assignment problem, Proceedings of the 1999 Congress
on Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 3, pp. 1999 -2070.
[6] Yong-Hua Song; Irving, M.R. Optimization techniques
for electrical power systems 11: Heuristic optimization
methods: Power Engineering Journal, Volume: 15 Issue:
3, June2001, pp. 151 -160
[7] In-Keun Yu; Chou, C.S.; Song, Y.H.,Application ofthe
ant colony search algorithm to short-term generation
scheduling problem of thermal units: lntemational
Conference on Power System Technology, Vol. 1. 1998,
pp. 552 -556.
[XI Shyh-her Huang, Enhancement of hydroelectric
generation scheduling using ant colony system based
optimization approaches, IEEE Transaction on Energy
Conversion, Vol. 16 Issue: 3, Sept. 2001, pp. 296-301.
[9] Luth J., Four Rules to Help Locate Protective Devices,
Electrical World, Aug., 1991, pp. 36-37.
[IO] Levitin, G , Mazal-Tov S., and Elmakis D., Optimum
Switch Allocation in Electric Distribution System by
Genetic Algorithm, Electric Power Systems Research,
No. 31, 19<4, pp. 97.102.
L
I I I 1 Billinton. R.. Jonnavithula.. S... ODtimum
1 . Switching
Device Piacement in Radial Distribution Systems: IEEE
Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. I I , No. 3, July
1996,pp. 1646-1651.
[I21 Celli, C., Pilo, F., Optimum Sectionalizing Switches
Allocation in Distribution Networks, IEEE
Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 14, No. 3, July
1999, pp. 1167-1172.
[I31 Chowdhury, A A , Koval, D.O., Value-Based
Distribution System Reliability Planning; IEEE
Transactions on Industry Applications, Vol. 34, No. I ,
Jan.-Feb. 1998, pp. 23 -29.
[I41 Chen R. L., Allen, K., Billinton, R., Value-Based
Distribution Reliability Assessment and Planning, IEEE
Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. I O , No. I , Jan.
1995, pp. 421 4 2 9
[I51 Teng, J. H., Lu, C. N, Feedcr Switch Relocation for
Customer Interruption Costs Minimization: IEEE

755
 T ~on power
~ ~system,
~ vol.
, 17, N ~ 1,. pp, 254- University, Taiwan, since 1998. His current research interests
259,2002. are Energy Management System, Distribution Automation and
Power Quality.
7.BIOGRAPHIES Yi-Hwa Liu received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from National Taiwan University in 1998. Presently, he is a
Teng was born in 1969 in Tainan2 Taiwan. He research scientist in Industrial Technology Research Instihlte
received his BS, MS and Ph'D' degrees in (ITRI) Taiwan. His current research interest are in the areas of
engineering from the National Sun Yat-Sen University in 1991, Power Conversion and System Quality,
1993 and 1996 respectively. He has been with the I-Shou

756