Absolute stochastic simulated annealing approach to unit commitment problem

This paper presents a new approach to unit commitment problem using absolute stochastic simulated annealing method. In every iteration, a solution is taken with a certain probability. Typically in simulated annealing method, a higher cost feasible solution is accepted with temperature dependent probability, but other solutions are accepted deterministically. That may lead to the near optimization slowly. However in this paper, all the solutions, both higher and lower cost, are associated with acceptance probabilities. Besides, number of bits flipping is decided by appropriate probability distribution. Excess units with system dependent probability distribution handle constraints efficiently. To reduce the economic load dispatch (ELD) calculation, sign bit vector is introduced as well. The proposed method is tested using the reported problem data set. Simulation results for the systems up to 100-unit are compared to previous reported results. Numerical results show an improvement in solution cost and time compared to the results obtained from recent powerful algorithms