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The demand of electrical energy is increasing and so is its cost. The conventional means of generation of electrical are the hydel and thermal. Their optimized mutual operation results in the most economic electrical energy for the end user. Therefore, the optimized operation of hydel and thermal plants known as hydrothermal coordination (HTC) is one of the important and challenging tasks in the field of power system operation. This paper investigates a modified version of a new nature inspired algorithm, water cycle algorithm called as evaporation rate-based water cycle algorithm (ERWCA) for the solution of HTC. This algorithm has its roots from the natural water cycle. The raindrops form streams, which flow to the rivers and eventually into the sea. The streams either merge into rivers and sea or they are too slow to reach the rivers or sea; the evaporation process occurs, which again causes the rainfall. Hence, new streams will be created. In this paper, ERWCA has been successfully applied to the problem of HTC. The complex constraints of the hydel and thermal network especially the prohibited discharge zones of hydel plants and the ramp rates of thermal plants, which are rarely taken into account, have been incorporated. The comparison of the results with other nature inspired techniques already available in the literature like particle swarm optimization and differential evolution shows the strength and potential of this new technique ERWCA in obtaining the better quality result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrothermal scheduling is a vital step in power system operational planning. It deals with the coordinated operation of hydel and thermal machines so that the cost of production of electrical energy is minimum subject to the satisfaction of the constraints. This paper presents the solution of non-convex short-term hydrothermal scheduling due to valve point effects using an improved version of a meta-heuristic method water cycle algorithm called as evaporation rate-based water cycle algorithm (ERWCA). ERWCA is a nature inspired algorithm based on hydrologic cycle of water that how the raindrops form streams and these streams flow to the rivers and sea. The feasibility and effectiveness of ERWCA have been tested on different hydrothermal test systems consisting of four hydel units configured with one thermal, three thermal and ten thermal units involving all the constraints. The results obtained from these simulations have been compared with other methods such as DE, PSO and GA, and they show that the solutions obtained from ERWCA are superior in terms of cost and computational time. Hence, the proposed ERWCA is a remarkable method for solving short-term hydrothermal scheduling problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing environmental concerns, the demand of clean and green energy and concern of atmospheric pollution is increasing. Hence, the power utilities are forced to limit their emissions within the prescribed limits. Therefore, the minimization of fuel cost as well as exhaust gas emissions is becoming an important and challenging task in the short-term scheduling of hydro-thermal energy systems. This paper proposes a novel algorithm known as WCA-ER (Water Cycle Algorithm with Evaporation Rate) to inspect the short term EEPSHES (Economic Emission Power Scheduling of Hydrothermal Energy Systems). WCA has its ancestries from the natural hydrologic cycle i.e. the raining process forms streams and these streams start flowing towards the rivers which finally flow towards the sea. The worth of WCA-ER has been tested on the standard economic emission power scheduling of hydrothermal energy test system consisting of four hydropower and three thermal plants. The problem has been investigated for the three case studies (i) ECS (Economic Cost Scheduling), (ii) ES (Economic Emission Scheduling) and (iii) ECES (Economic Cost & Emission Scheduling). The results obtained show that WCA-ER is superior to many other methods in the literature in bringing lower fuel cost and emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental concerns are gaining importance nowadays for power producing companies in the context of clean energy act. The efforts of reducing the harmful emissions beyond a certain level are being made by most of the power utilities in the developing countries. Consequently, the minimization of harmful emissions has also become an important objective function while solving the hydrothermal scheduling problem. The heuristic approaches are considered as potential solution methodologies for non-convex hydrothermal scheduling. This paper presents an Evaporation Rate based Water Cycle Algorithm (ERWCA) for the solution of nonconvex Environmental Economic Scheduling of Hydrothermal Energy Systems (EESHES). This algorithm has been evolved from the water cycle nature of raining, formation of streams, and their movement towards the rivers and finally into the sea. ERWCA has been investigated on the standard test system of EESHES with three case studies: (i) Economic Cost Scheduling, (ii) Environmental Economic Scheduling, (iii) Economic Environmental and Cost Scheduling. The comparison of obtained results with the recent results in the literature shows the superiority of ERWCA in terms of both lower fuel cost and fuel emissions. Hence, ERWCA is a worthwhile addition to the algorithms which have successfully solved this complex and combinatorial bi-objective optimization problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]