A Fast Scheduling Method to Solve Economic Load Dispatch Problem

Optimal scheduling of the generating units in one hour ahead considerably affects the electricity cost because the fuel cost component will bring up the economic load dispatch problem. Fuel cost is an essential parameter to calculate the optimal cost function of the power systems subject to the operating constraints and transmission loss. Generally, the economic load dispatch problem is resolved through the iteration step and using many variables so that it uses long computation time. The accuracy can also be low because the point of the solution can fall near the minimum local point. This paper proposes a method to provide better efficiency and accuracy of the economic load dispatch problem. The methodology forms a fuel cost function in the quadratic equation mathematically derived in order to obtain a faster solution without iteration processes. The B-loss matrix determines the transmission loss after receiving the optimal solution without considering transmission losses. The method validation simulates the economic load dispatch for the 26-Bus power system and the 6-generating units. After comparing with the Genetic Algorithm, the proposed method can save fuel costs significantly of about $ 29876.46 in 24 hours, while computing time in executing the application program is short enough, namely 0.15 seconds.