AC constrained hydro-thermal generation scheduling problem: Application of Benders decomposition method improved by BFPSO

In this paper, Benders Decomposition method improved by Bacterial Foraging oriented by Particle Swarm Optimization method (BDI-BFPSO) is used for solving AC constrained hydro-thermal generation scheduling problem. The objective function of the proposed generation scheduling problem is to minimize the generation cost and emission cost of the power system by considering the valve point effect and prohibited operating zones of thermal units. This problem is a large scale mixed integer nonlinear programming problem with a great number of equality and inequality constraints related to generation units, hydro system and power system. In order to solve this problem using BDI-BFPSO, the optimization problem is decomposed into a master problem and a sub-problem which they can be solved iteratively. The performance of the BDI-BFPSO method is tested and evaluated on IEEE 6-bus and 118-bus standard systems. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed BDI-BFPSO method for solving the scheduling problem in comparison with other methods.

► Bender Decomposition improved by intelligent methods is used for solving hydro-thermal generation scheduling.
► Bacterial Foraging oriented by Particle Swarm Optimization is used as an intelligent method.
► Scheduling problem is decomposed to a master problem and a sub-problem which is solved iteratively.
► The problem is a large scale mixed integer nonlinear programming one with great number of constraints.
► Simulation results on IEEE 6 and 118-bus systems confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.