Abstract

The objective of dynamic economic dispatch (DED) problem is to determine the generation schedule of the committed generation units, which minimizes the total operating cost over a dispatch period, while satisfying a set of constraints. The effect of valve points and prohibited operating zones (POZs) in the generating units’ cost functions makes the DED a highly nonlinear and nonconvex optimization problem with multiple local minima. Considering the ramp-rate limits and transmission losses makes the DED problem even more complicated. Hence, proposing an effective solution method for this optimization problem is of great interest. This paper presents a novel heuristic algorithm to solve DED problem of generating units by employing a hybrid immune-genetic algorithm. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, four test systems that consist of different numbers of generating units are studied. The valve-point effects, POZs, and ramp-rate constraints along with transmission losses are also considered in simulation cases. The results obtained through the proposed method are compared with those reported in the literature. These results substantiate the applicability of the proposed method for solving the constrained DED problem with nonsmooth cost functions.