Research on Chaotic Firefly Algorithm and the Application in Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch

Firefly algorithm (FA) is a newly proposed swarm intelligence optimization algorithm. Like many other general swarm intelligence optimization algorithms, the original version of FA is easy to trap into local optima. In order to overcome this drawback, the chaotic firefly algorithm (CFA) is proposed. The methods of chaos initialization, chaos population regeneration and linear decreasing inertia weight have been introduced into the original version of FA so as to increase its global search mobility for robust global optimization. The CFA is calculated in Matlab and is examined on six benchmark functions. In order to evaluate the engineering application of the algorithm, the reactive power optimization problem in IEEE 30 bus system is solved by CFA. The outcomes show that the CFA has better performance compared to the original version of FA and PSO.