A low-cost parallel computing platform for power engineering applications

This paper develops and evaluates a low-cost parallel computing platform for the implementation of parallel algorithms in power engineering applications. The proposed approach utilises an existing local area network without incurring any additional hardware costs. Application of computational intelligence techniques based on the developed computing platform to the economic dispatch problem is outlined. The performance of genetic algorithms in parallel and cluster structures and their abilities in coping time constraint applications are also demonstrated. It is found that when the workload is large, a parallel computing structure should be exploited for cost-effectiveness purpose.