Real coded chemical reaction based optimization for short-term hydrothermal scheduling

This paper presents a real coded chemical reaction based (RCCRO) algorithm to solve the short-term hydrothermal scheduling (STHS) problem. Hydrothermal system is highly complex and related with every problem variables in a nonlinear way. The objective of the hydro thermal scheduling is to determine the optimal hourly schedule of power generation for different hydrothermal power system for certain intervals of time such that cost of power generation is minimum. Chemical reaction optimization mimics the interactions of molecules in term of chemical reaction to reach a low energy stable state. A real coded version of chemical reaction optimization, known as real-coded chemical reaction optimization (RCCRO) is considered here. To check the effectiveness of the RCCRO, 3 different test systems are considered and mathematical remodeling of the algorithm is done to make it suitable for solving short-term hydrothermal scheduling problem. Simulation results confirm that the proposed approach outperforms several other existing optimization techniques in terms quality of solution obtained and computational efficiency. Results also establish the robustness of the proposed methodology to solve STHS problems.