A new hybrid technique for solution of economic load dispatch problems based on Biogeography Based Optimization

This paper presents a hybrid technique combining Evolutionary Strategy(ES) with Biogeography Based Optimization (BBO/ES) algorithm to solve economic load dispatch problems of thermal plants considering equality and inequality constraints, transmission losses and valve point loading. Biogeography is a recently developed heuristic algorithm which has shown impressive performance on many well known benchmarks. In order to improve BBO, distinctive features from ES are incorporated in BBO modification. This algorithm searches for the global optimum mainly through two steps: migration and mutation. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been verified on two different test systems, both small and large involving varying degree of complexity. A comparison of simulation results reveals that the proposed algorithm is better than those listed in the comparison table in terms of the quality of the solution. This method seems to be promising alternative approach for solving the ELD problems in practical power systems.