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This paper presents an effective approach for solving economic load dispatch problems contemplating the scheduling a set of thermal generating units to produce a specific power at low consumption costs. These problems can be thought of as nonlinear, non-convex, and highly constrained optimization problems with a large number of local minima. To cope with the above issues in solving such problems, a new meta-heuristic named capuchin search algorithm was adopted. To boost the search performance of this algorithm as well as to mitigate its early convergence and regression to the local optimum, it was hybridized with another algorithm and improved using several positive amendments. First, a memory element was added to this algorithm to ameliorate its position and velocity update mechanisms in order to exploit the most encouraging candidate solutions. Second, two adaptive parametric functions were used to manage the exploration and exploitation features of this algorithm and balance them appropriately. Finally, the hybridization was made using the gradient-based optimizer to strengthen the intensification ability of this algorithm and balance its searching ability to fulfill sensible search performance. The proficiency of the proposed algorithm was divulged by assessing it on computationally difficult economic load dispatch problems under 6 different tests with a generator of 3, 13, 40, 80, and 140 units, each with different constraints and load conditions. The proposed algorithm provided the best performance among many other competitors. Its superiority and practicality were revealed by obtaining optimal solutions for large-scale test cases such as 40-unit and 140-unit test systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Enhanced Chameleon Swarm Algorithm (ECSA) by integrating roulette wheel selection and Lé vy flight methods is presented to solve non-convex Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) problems. CSA has diverse strategies to move towards the optimal solution. Even so, this algorithm's performance faces some hurdles, such as early convergence and slumping into local optimum. In this paper, several enhancements were made to this algorithm. First, it's position updating process was slightly tweaked and took advantage of the chameleons' randomization as well as adopting several time-varying functions. Second, the Lévy flight operator is integrated with roulette wheel selection method and both are combined with ECSA to augment the exploration behavior and lessen its bias towards exploitation. Finally, an add-on position updating strategy is proposed to develop a further balance between exploration and exploitation conducts. The optimization performance of ECSA is shown by testing it on five various real ELD cases with a generator having 3, 13, 40, 80 and 140 units, each with different constraints. The results of the ELD systems' analysis depict that ECSA is better than the parent CSA and other state-of-the art methods. Further, the efficacy of ECSA was experimented on several benchmark test functions, and its performance was compared to other well-known optimization methods. Experimental results show that ECSA surpasses other methods on complex benchmark functions with modest computational burdens. The superiority and practicality of ECSA is demonstrated by getting new best solutions for large-scale ELD cases such as 40-unit and 140-unit test systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the economic load dispatch (ELD) problem with valve point effect is tackled using a hybridization between salp swarm algorithm (SSA) as a population-based algorithm and β -hill climbing optimizer as a single point-based algorithm. The proposed hybrid SSA is abbreviated as HSSA. This is to achieve the right balance between the intensification and diversification of the ELD search space. ELD is an important problem in the power systems which is concerned with scheduling the generation units in active generators in optimal way to minimize the fuel cost in accordance with equality and inequality constraints. The proposed HSSA is evaluated using six real-world ELD systems: 3-unit generator, two cases of 13-unit generator, 40-unit generator, 80-unit generator, and 140-unit generator system. These ELD systems are well circulated in the previous literature. The comparative results against 66 well-regarded algorithms are conducted. The results show that the proposed HSSA is able to produce viable and competitive solutions for ELD problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic load dispatch (ELD) is a crucial problem in the power system which is tackled by distributing the required generation power through a set of units to minimize the fuel cost required. This distribution is subject to two main constraints: (1) equality and inequality related to power balance and power output, respectively. In the optimization context, ELD is formulated as a non-convex, nonlinear, constrained optimization problem which cannot be easily solved using calculus-based techniques. Several optimization algorithms have been adapted. Due to the complexity nature of ELD search space, the theoretical concepts of these optimization algorithms have been modified or hybridized. In this paper, the grey wolf optimizer (GWO) which is a swarm intelligence is hybridized with β -hill climbing optimizer (β HC) which is a local search algorithm, to improve convergence properties. GWO is very powerful in a wide search, while β HC is very powerful in deep search. By combining the wide and deep search ability in a single optimization framework, the balance between the exploration and exploitation is correctly managed. The proposed hybrid algorithm is named β -GWO which is evaluated using five different test cases of ELD problems: 3 generating units with 850 MW; 13 generating units with 1800 MW; 13 generating units with 2520 MW; 40 generating units with 10,500 MW; and 80 generating units with 21,000 MW. β -GWO is comparatively measured using 49 comparative methods. The results obtained by β -GWO outperform others in most test cases. In conclusion, the proposed β -GWO is proved to be a powerful method for ELD problem or for any other similar problems in the power system domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]