Economic load dispatch for nonsmooth cost functions using particle swarm optimization

This paper presents a new approach to economic load dispatch (ELD) problems with nonsmooth objective functions using a particle swarm optimization (PSO). In practice, ELD problems have nonsmooth objective functions with equality and inequality constraints that make it difficult to find the global optimum using any mathematical approaches. In this paper, a new PSO framework is suggested to deal with the equality and inequality constraints in ELD problems. The proposed PSO can always provide solution(s) satisfying the constraints within a realistic computation time and is devised not to interrupt the dynamic process inherent in the conventional PSO. To show its efficiency and effectiveness, the proposed PSO is applied to sample ELD problems with smooth cost functions as well as with nonsmooth cost functions. The results of the proposed PSO are compared with those of the conventional numerical method, evolutionary programming approach, and the modified Hopfield neural network approach.