In this paper, two algorithms for solving the problem of operation planning of electric power distribution systems are presented. This problem consists in defining the values of a set of continuous and discrete control variables to obtain better system performance. Given the large number of possible combinations of the settings of the control variables, the problem presents combinatorial explosion. To work around it, two procedures are proposed. In the first one, the genetic algorithm developed by Chu and Beasley (GACB) is used with a special mechanism of creation of the initial population. In the second procedure, a simplified algorithm which is capable of obtaining good quality solutions at a much lower computational time complexity than GACB is proposed. 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