SYNOPSIS

School of Science and Technology,

University of Management and Technology, Lahore Pakistan

Optimization of Economic load Dispatch

Abstract
Electricity demand is increasing daily, due to the rapid growth of electrical and electronics
products in market. The main objective has now shifted to improve the performance, lower
the cost of solution and to make reliable power system. To meet the increasing demand of
electrical load, new conventional and nonconventional generations systems are needed to
install. Due to the rapid changes in modern world, energy shortage is a big issue. Due to
depleting conventional sources with time, energy experts are interested in renewable
energy sources. In order to ensure the stability of power system, demand and generation
must be balanced. Hence, the economical load dispatch technique is applied to define the
optimal solution for generation units, power output, and to minimize the operating fuel
costs of these units.
Economic load dispatch problem is complex, when Renewable energy units are also
considered with thermal power plant. So it is challenging to find the optimal solution at
lower fuel cost, such that generated power meets the active power load demand. There are
different techniques available to solve the economical dispatch problem. This thesis is
mainly aimed to design Economic load dispatch model for thermal and wind power plants.
Due to the varying nature of Wind, probabilistic approach is used to solve the economic
load dispatch problems. In this thesis, the purposed optimization method is Genetic
algorithm (GA). The main idea behind Genetic algorithm is that, all generators will
optimally supply the required electricity load demand at minimum fuel cost, while
satisfying the system constraints. Through GA, we will find the feasible range of optimal
solution, and restrict the output power of thermal units. The simulations were
performed on various test systems, one with six thermal generators and the other with six

thermal generators and wind power unit. The proposed problem will be simulated using
MATLAB.

Back ground
Engineers are always concerned with the cost of the product, and services at optimum planning
of the electric power generation. Main purpose of power electric companies is that they provide
the electricity to the consumers at the lowest cost. Under the normal conditions the capacity of
generation plants are more than the demand and losses. So for this purpose economical load
dispatch is an important and fundamental issue in power system to optimize generators operating
capacity at minimum fuel cost. It is important to solve the economic load dispatch problem
efficiently. Cost function is an important function in Power system. In the traditional ELD
problem, the cost function is used as a linear function which can be solving using simple linear
mathematical programming. But today we take cost function as a quadratic function that is
nonlinear function. Different optimization methods are used to solve nonlinear economic load
dispatch problem and find out the optimal solution.
There are different approaches to solve the ELD problems, some of them are mathematical
programming approaches and some of them are optimization techniques used. Most common
techniques are Lambda iteration technique, the gradient method and Newton raphson method.
However these traditional approaches are fast and solve the economic load dispatch problem
effectively, if and only if the fuel cost curve of the grating units are piece-wise linear and
monotonically increasing. So these programming techniques are not applicable for real practical
world. These all techniques are linear technique and these methods have some issues that these
method contained assumptions which increase the operation cost of generator.
Practically the input to output characteristic of the generator are highly non linear and nonsmooth. To solve that non linear cost curve there are several different optimization techniques
that are applied to solve the practical applicable in real world economic load dispatch problem
like genetic algorithm, evolutionary programming, and particle swarm optimization solve nonconvex optimization problems efficiently and often achieve a fast and near global optimal
solution.
Fig 1 shows the operating curve cost of the fuel generator. It shows that if the nonlinearity of cost
function is increasing, this cost curve shows that the increase the demand of also increase the
operating cost f curve. So to minimize the operating cost, programming techniques are used.

Fig-1

Characteristic Curve of Generators

Problem
Over a last decade the demand of electricity is increasing. The behaviors of the thermal power
plants are nonlinear, so increase in demand is the main reason for increasing prices. Now the
problem is to determine the optimal solution of different plants such that the total operating cost
of generating unit is reduced. The main important problem is that each generator has different
cost curve some of generator output is high at low fuel cost and some of generator ouput is low
at high fuel cost. This problem is more critical when wind power is also attached with these
thermal power units in parallel. Wind is varying in nature. So its more difficult to find out the
optimal solution when wind is parallel attached with those power units.
The main objectives of this study are:
1
2

To find out the optimal solution of load dispatch problem and the cost of function
Reduce the operating or running cost of generators.

In economic load dispatch problem constrains are important factor. So Constrains are
also consider to write a code and simulation.

To study the Thermal and wind power plant and its function

Generators have different fuel cost, its important to get the maximum power from low
cost generator and also satisfy the constraint of system.

Identify the weakness and effectiveness of previous algorithm of economic load dispatch

To get the maximum output power from the renewable sources.

Strategy
Economical load dispatch research has achieved the considerable progress in last decade. The
main aim of optimal algorithm application is to make economical load dispatch that the system
should be constrained, and to minimize the cost so that the power generation is equal to the
power demand or within limits of maximize to minimum power. To solve Economic load
dispatch problem lot of algorithms have been proposed. Most of the Algorithm not work for real
practical world.. So its a big challenge to propose algorithm or Economic load dispatch models
which will also work in real practical life. In this paper proposed method is genetic Algorithm.
GA algorithm is the best evolutionary technique. Evolution treated as optimization process. GA
is used for finding the global minimas or global maxima. Due to nonlinear characteristics of
generating unit and varying natures of wind the past simplealgorithm method cant find the
minimum or best solution for optima and these methods are not acceptable in real world. The
beauty of GA is that it would work on practical cases. So our strategy in this paper is that to
solve the economical load dispatch problem through the genetic algorithm.

Fig 2-Flow chart of General Genetic Algorithm

References

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