Short-term hydrothermal scheduling using Gravitational Search algorithm

The Gravitational Search algorithm (GSA) is one of the recent additions to the new heuristic optimization algorithms based on law of gravity and mass interactions has been applied to solve the short term scheduling hydrothermal system. In the proposed algorithm, the searcher agents are collection of masses interact with each other based on the Newtonian gravity and the laws of motion. Hydrothermal scheduling involves the optimization of nonlinear objective function with set of operational and physical constraints. The cascading nature of hydro plants, water transport delay and scheduling time linkage, power balance constraints, variable hourly water discharge limits, reservoir storage limits, operation limits of thermal and hydro units, hydraulic continuity constraint and initial and final reservoir storage limits are fully taken into consideration. The validity and the performance of the proposed approach are demonstrated through a large hydrothermal test system comprising of 54 thermal and 44 hydro plants.