International Journal of Advance Research and Innovation

Unit Commitment is large scale short-term optimization problem, in which main objective is to schedule generation to minimize the total fuel cost, subjected to large number of constraints that must be satisfied. In this paper unit commitment problem is solved by using a new evolutionary algorithm known as imperialistic algorithm. In ICA the initial populations individuals (countries) are the countries are in two types: imperialistic and colonies that all together form some empires .Imperialistic competitions among these empires converge to state in their exist only one empire. In the proposed ICA for the unit commitment problem, the scheduling variables are coded as integers; therefore the some constraints are handled are handled directly as minimum up and down type constraints. A new method for initializing the countries is proposed. To verify the performance of the Imperialistic Competition Algorithm (ICA), it is applied to systems with ten number of generating units in one-day scheduling period. Nomenclature Ngen= Number of units H = Scheduling horizon(in hours) PD(t) = load demand at thour. PR(t) = system reserve at thour. C = No. of operating cycle for each unit TIC= Duration of operating cycle c for unit i Pi(t) = output power of unit i Pmax,I= Maximum output power of unit i Pmin,I= Minimum output power of unit i Pi,max(t)=Maximum output power of unit i at hour t Pi,min(t)= Minimum output power of unit i at hour t MUTi= Maximum up-time limit of unit i MDTi= Minimum down time limit of unit i RUI= Ramp up rate of unit i RDi= Ramp down rate of unit i SUCi = start up cost of unit „i‟ HSCi= Hot start cost of unit i CSCi= cold start cost of unit i CSHi= cold start hour of unit i FCi= Fuel cost of unit i TFC = total fuel cost ISi= Initial state of i