Particle swarm optimization technique based short-term hydrothermal scheduling

Particle swarm optimization is applied to determine the optimal hourly schedule of power generation in a hydrothermal power system. A multi-reservoir cascaded hydroelectric system with a nonlinear relationship between water discharge rate, net head and power generation is considered. The water transport delay between connected reservoirs is taken into account. In the present work, the effects of valve point loading in the fuel cost function of the thermal plants are also taken into consideration. The developed algorithm is illustrated for a test system consisting of four hydro plants and three thermal plants. Cost characteristics of individual thermal units are considered. The test results are compared with those obtained using evolutionary programming and simulated annealing technique. It is found that the convergence characteristic is excellent and the results obtained by the proposed method are superior in terms of fuel cost and computation time.