Application of Firefly Algorithm for Optimizing the Available Transfer Capability in the Sulbagsel Electricity System of Indonesia

In modern research, the Firefly Algorithm (FA), as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach, has been widely used to optimize the electricity system; however, FA implementation in a real-world electricity system is still limited, especially for optimizing the Available Transfer Capability (ATC) of the transmission line. This paper proposes an FA application to optimize the ATC of the large-scaled Southern Sulawesi (Sulawesi Bagian Selatan, Sulbagsel) electricity system in Indonesia to mitigate future growth in electricity load demand. To obtain the optimal ATC, FA is used to maximize the transferable power that can be securely transmitted from 46 source areas to 59 sink areas in the Sulbagsel electricity system. FA eliminates the need for manual trial-and-error calculations in optimizing the large number of buses. Based on the results, FA produces ATC calculations with low standard deviation and narrow confidence intervals. FA achieves an average ATC that is 80.87% better than repeated power flow as a conventional method across all contingency cases. Furthermore, the voltage profile, total active power system losses, and line loading were also presented to validate the results. Overall, the FA successfully optimized the ATC of the Sulbagsel electricity system without violating operational constraints.