Performance analysis of metaheuristic techniques for nonconvex economic dispatch

Economic load dispatch (ELD) problem is an optimization problem where objective function is highly non linear, non-convex, non differentiable and may have multiple local minima. Therefore classical optimization methods may not convergence or get trapped to any local minima. This paper presents a comparative study of four different heuristic algorithms i.e. classical Particle swarm optimization (CPSO), Particle swarm optimization with Time-varying acceleration coefficients (PSOTVAC), Differential Evolution (DE) and Bacterial Foraging Optimization (BFO) for solving the ELD problem considering various constraints such as ramp rate limits (RRL), prohibited operating zones (POZ) and valve point effects (VPL). A detailed comparison of the various methods is carried out on three test systems having 3-unit, 13-unit and 40-units. Solution quality, convergence behavior, consistency and speed are used as performance metrics.