Application of Particle Swarm Optimization for Economic Load Dispatch Problems

This paper presents an efficient and reliable particle swarm optimization (PSO) method for the economic load dispatch (ELD) problems. The PSO method was developed through the simulation of a simplified social system and has been found to be robust in solving continuous nonlinear optimization problems in terms of accuracy of the solution and computation time and it can out perform other algorithms. The proposed algorithm is applied for the ELD of three unit & six unit thermal plant systems and extended to three plant system in which one plant is combined cycle co-generation plant. The performance of the proposed PSO method is compared with the conventional method and genetic algorithm method and it is observed that this method is reliable and may replace effectively the conventional practices presently performed in different central load dispatch centers. The comparison of results shows that the proposed PSO method was indeed capable of obtaining higher quality solutions efficiently for ELD problems within less computation time.