In recent years, due to the increasing number of renewable energy sources, which are characterised by the stochastic nature of the generated power, interest in energy storage has increased. Commercial installations use simple deterministic methods with low economic efficiency. Hence, there is a need for intelligent algorithms that combine technical and economic aspects. Methods based on computational intelligence (CI) could be a solution. The paper presents an algorithm for optimising power flow in microgrids by using computational intelligence methods. This approach ensures technical and economic efficiency by combining multiple aspects in a single objective function with minimal numerical complexity. It is scalable to any industrial or residential microgrid system. The method uses load and generation forecasts at any time horizon and resolution and the actual specifications of the energy storage systems, ensuring that technological constraints are maintained. The paper presents selected calculation results for a typical residential microgrid supplied with a photovoltaic system. The results of the proposed algorithm are compared with the outcomes provided by a deterministic management system. The computational intelligence method allows the objective function to be adjusted to find the optimal balance of economic and technical effects. Initially, the authors tested the invented algorithm for technical effects, minimising the power exchanged with the distribution system. The application of the algorithm resulted in financial losses, €12.78 for the deterministic algorithm and €8.68 for the algorithm using computational intelligence. Thus, in the next step, a control favouring economic goals was checked using the CI algorithm. The case where charging the storage system from the grid was disabled resulted in a financial benefit of €10.02, whereas when the storage system was allowed to charge from the grid, €437.69. Despite the financial benefits, the application of the algorithm resulted in up to 1560 discharge cycles. Thus, a new unconventional case was considered in which technical and economic objectives were combined, leading to an optimum benefit of €255.17 with 560 discharge cycles per year. Further research of the algorithm will focus on the development of a fitness function coupled to the power system model.

This paper presents the application of an improved ant colony optimization algorithm called mixed integer distributed ant colony optimization to optimize the power flow solution in power grids. The results provided indicate an improvement in the reduction of operational costs in comparison with other optimization algorithms used in optimal power flow studies. The application was realized to optimize power flow in the IEEE 30 and the IEEE 57 bus test cases with the objective of operational cost minimization. The optimal power flow problem described is a non-linear, non-convex, complex and heavily constrained problem.

This article presents a new efficient optimization technique namely the Multi- Objective Improved Differential Evolution Algorithm (MOIDEA) to solve the multiobjective optimal power flow problem in power systems. The main features of the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm are simple, easy, and efficient, but sometimes, it is prone to stagnation in the local optima. This paper has proposed many improvements, in the exploration and exploitation processes, to enhance the performance of DE for solving optimal power flow (OPF) problems. The main contributions of the DE algorithm are i) the crossover rate will be changing randomly and continuously for each iteration, ii) all probabilities that have been ignored in the crossover process have been taken, and iii) in selection operation, the mathematical calculations of the mutation process have been taken. Four conflicting objective functions simultaneously have been applied to select the Pareto optimal front for the multi-objective OPF. Fuzzy set theory has been used to extract the best compromise solution. These objective functions that have been considered for setting control variables of the power system are total fuel cost (TFC), total emission (TE), real power losses (RPL), and voltage profile (VP) improvement. The IEEE 30-bus standard system has been used to validate the effectiveness and superiority of the approach proposed based on MATLAB software. Finally, to demonstrate the effectiveness and capability of the MOIDEA, the results obtained by this method will be compared with other recent methods.