Profit based unit commitment: A parallel ABC approach using a workstation cluster

This paper proposes a parallel artificial bee colony (PABC) approach for committing generating units thereby maximizing the profit of generation companies. Profit based unit commitment (PBUC) must be obtained in a short time even though there is an increase in generating units. Nowadays, computing resources are available in plenty, and effective utilization of these resources will be advantageous for reducing the time complexity for a large scale power system. Here, the message passing interface based technique is used in the PABC algorithm in distributed and shared memory models. The time complexity and the solution quality with respect to the number of processors in a cluster are thoroughly analyzed. PABC for PBUC is tested for a power system ranging from 10 to 1000 generating units. Also the PABC is validated for economic dispatch and the unit commitment problem in a traditional power system on 40 and 10 unit systems, respectively.

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► Parallel ABC maximizes the profit of Generating Companies (GENCOs).
► Distributed and shared memory models are executed using MPI.
► Testing and validation is carried out for generating units ranging from 10 to 1000.
► Shared memory outperforms distributed cluster models for PBUCP.
► Distributed cluster is a practicable alternative in optimum usage and economy.