Optimal load shedding for voltage collapse prevention using improved harmony search algorithm

Electric power systems became suffers from many problems, this may lead to voltage instability, collapses, black outs. Generally, system congestion or system overloading can be reduced by some control strategy such as a generation-rescheduling or dropping load to restore equilibrium state, hence, load shedding is an emergency control operation. However, optimum load shedding strategy during contingency situation is considered important issues in power system security and stability analysis. This paper proposes an implementation of optimization technique known improved harmony search algorithm (IHSA) for solving optimal load shedding problem. To show the effectiveness and capability of the developed approach in minimizing load shedding, enhance power system security, improving voltage stability for voltage collapse prevention, standard IEEE 30-bus test system is used for considering (N - 1) contingency with different multi-objective functions. The optimal results are compared with the other reported method. The results obtained provide the efficiency of the algorithm in terms of speed of convergence and high quality solution.