Hybrid Bacteria Foraging-DE based algorithm for Economic Load Dispatch with non-convex loads

An algorithm based on hybridization of Bacteria Foraging (BF) and Differential Evolution (DE) was developed to solve the problem of finding the optimum load allocation amongst the committed units in a power system with non-convex loads. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on a test case of 15 units. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with BF method. Also, the effect of swarming in performance of the hybrid algorithm is investigated. Results demonstrate that the performance of the hybrid algorithm is much better than BF in terms of convergence rate and solution quality. The swarming effect equips the hybrid algorithm with better search capability as demonstrated on the test case.