Coordination of directional overcurrent relays using opposition based chaotic differential evolution algorithm

•Efficient optimization algorithm.•Good literature review.•Standard IEEE bus systems as test models.•Result analysis with a good comparision with already existing algorithms. Coordination of directional over current relays (DOCR) has been considered as an optimization problem and has been solved using different types of optimization techniques by the developers. A wide variety of algorithms have been proposed over the past few decades for dealing with such problem. However considering its practical significance, there is always a scope for improvement in this area to get better results. In the present study, a set of two algorithms named opposition based chaotic differential evolution (OCDE1 and OCDE2) has been developed and applied to solve this problem. Both variants use the concept of opposition based learning and chaotic scale factor for obtaining an optimum solution. The proposed method is implemented in four test cases. The results are compared with previously proposed algorithms available in the literature and it was observed that the proposed schemes are quite competent for dealing with such problems.