Evaluation of the performance of different firefly algorithms to the economic load dispatch problem in electrical power systems

Abstract

The planning, operation and control of electric power systems has attracted the attention of many researchers. Thus, effort is put in improving the efficiency of generation and operation of power plants. Economic load dispatch (ELD) is crucial since it is required to schedule committed generating units so as to meet load demand at minimum operating cost. In addition to satisfying all system equality and inequality constraints as well as limitations imposed on the generating units during operation. To solve the economic load dispatch problem, traditional and intelligent techniques were applied. Researchers have shown interest in utilizing metaheuristic methods to solve complex optimization problems in real life applications. In this paper, three alternatives of firefly algorithms are applied to solve the nonlinear ELD problem. A comparative study is carried out on the solution of ELD problem using those recent variants and the classical firefly algorithm for different test cases. Efficiency is evaluated by comparing best solutions obtained in terms of execution time, fuel cost and power loss.

Keywords: Economic load dispatch, Firefly algorithm, Modified firefly, Memetic firefly, and Variable step size firefly