Distribution network optimization: Finding the most economic solution by using genetic algorithms

The problem of finding the optimal features in a distribution network is approached from an economic viewpoint. This problem is closely related to drops in pressure within the network, and is a complex mathemetical problem with some empirically adjusted formulae that make the problem very difficult to solve analytically. Thus, a method is proposed for finding the optimal network features, based on a well known optimization procedure, genetic algorithms, which have proven to be useful in this type of problems. Furthermore, a new problem-specific genetic operators are presented and shown to be intuitively and in practice better than the standard ones.