Nonconvex economic load dispatch using an efficient real-coded genetic algorithm

An efficient optimisation procedure based on real-coded genetic algorithm (RCGA) is proposed for the solution of economic load dispatch (ELD) problem with continuous and nonsmooth/nonconvex cost function and with various constraints being considered. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been demonstrated on different systems considering the transmission losses and valve point loading effect in thermal units. The proposed algorithm is equipped with an effective constraint handling technique, which eliminates the need for penalty parameters. For the purpose of comparison, the same problem has also been solved using binary-coded genetic algorithm (BCGA) and three other popular RCGAs. In the proposed RCGA, simulated binary crossover and polynomial mutation are used against the single point crossover and bit-flipping mutation in BCGA. It has been observed from the test results that the proposed RCGA is more efficient in terms of thermal cost minimisation and execution time for ELD problem with continuous search space than BCGA and some other popular RCGAs.