A step toward cleaner energy production: A water saving-based optimization approach for economic dispatch in modern power systems.

• A bi-objective economic dispatch for a wind-thermal-energy storage system. • Pumped hydroelectric storage system to alleviate the peak-time pressure. • Hybrid optimization algorithm: whale optimization enhanced by wavelet mutation. • Trade-off between operation cost and water consumption as the problem's objectives. This paper proposes a novel approach to discover an optimal solution of multi-area dynamic economic dispatch integrated with wind power and pumped hydroelectric storage. Minimizing of water consumption associated with power production in thermal power plants is yet to be addressed in economic dispatch problem. Thus, it is crucial to modernize the conventional power industry to save the water utilization in the process of generating electric energy. As a result, making a feasible power generation schedule by finding a trade-off between total generation cost and water consumption is the main focus of this paper. Toward this end, this study introduces an effective optimization approach for decreasing the contaminants ‎produced by the combustion-based power plants via reflecting the impacts of wind power and storage systems in the proposed problem. An efficient optimization algorithm considering the merits of whale optimization algorithm and wavelet mutation is also proposed to handle the complications of the trade-off between generation cost and water consumption. The proposed approach is applied to 40-unit 4-area IEEE system by 1) scrutinizing the performance of the hybrid framework from different standpoints, 2) achieving an improvement about 5.4% in the operation cost, and 3) promoting the decarbonized economy by implementing ‎renewable energy. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]