Design of Optimization Methodology for Economic Dispatch of Thermal Generating Units

Abstract

The demand for power supply is increasing day by day to fulfill the energy consumption of people. Renewable and non-renewable energy resources are used for power generation. In thermal units of power generation, the important thing is that efficient operational policies are required in these units, as increasing the power generating units is not only the solution to meet the load demands but essential to optimize the existing generating units effectively. Economic dispatch (ED) generating units are operating economically to fulfill the load demand and losses along with different practical constraints. In order to overcome the non-linear complex problems in power economic dispatch of thermal generating units, an advanced modified Levi Flight Firefly Algorithm (MLFA) is employed on various IEEE standard test systems for validation. The proposed technique/algorithm has been applied on 6, 13, 15, and 20 unit test systems considering various system constraints including valve loading effect, upper and lower limits, transmission losses, etc. In this research, an objective function is formulated on the flashing behavior of fireflies which optimizes the problems. The MATLAB software is used for the implementation of this algorithm. In the end, statistical results are compared with other existing algorithms which revealed that the solution is effectively converged, and the cost is less as compared to other algorithms.