Reactive power optimization is an effective method for improving the electricity quality and reducing the power loss in power system, and it is a mixed nonlinear optimization problem, so the optimization process becomes very complicated. Genetic algorithm is a kind of adaptive global optimization search algorithm based on simulating biological genetic in the natural environment and evolutionary processes, can be used to solve complex optimization problems such as reactive power optimization. Genetic algorithm is used to solve reactive power optimization problem in this study, improved the basic genetic algorithm, included the select, crossover and mutation strategy, and proposed a individual fitness function with penalty factor. The proposed algorithm is applied to the IEEE9-bus system to calculate reactive power. The results show the superiority of the proposed model and algorithm.
