Economic load dispatch using krill herd algorithm

Economic load dispatch (ELD) is an important topic in the operation of power plants which can help to build up effective generating management plans. The practical ELD problem has non-smooth cost function with nonlinear constraints which make it difficult to be effectively solved. This paper presents, a new and efficient krill herd algorithm (KHA) to solve both convex and non-convex ELD problems of thermal power units considering valve point loading, multiple fuel operation, transmission losses and constraints such as ramp rate limits and prohibited operating zones. To enhance the overall performance and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, the crossover and mutation operation of differential evolution (DE) are integrated with the proposed method. The different versions of KHA are successfully applied to small, medium, and large-scale power systems for solving six different ELD problems. The simulation results obtained by the proposed algorithms are compared with the results obtained using other recently develop methods available in the literature. From numerical results, it is found that the proposed KHA with crossover and mutation operators approach is able to provide better solution than other reported techniques in terms of fuel cost. Furthermore, this algorithm is better in terms of robustness than most of the existing algorithms used in this study. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.