A Modified Particle Swarm Optimization Technique for Economic Load Dispatch with Valve-Point Effect

This paper presents a new approach for solution of the economic load dispatch (ELD) problem with valve-point effect using a modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) technique. The practical ELD problems have non-smooth cost function with equality and inequality constraints, which make the problem of finding the global optimum difficult when using any mathematical approaches. In this paper, a modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) mechanism is proposed to deal with the equality and inequality constraints in the ELD problems through the application of Gaussian and Cauchy probability distributions. The MPSO approach introduces new diversification and intensification strategy into the particles thus preventing PSO algorithm from premature convergence. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, the numerical studies have been performed for three different test systems, i.e. six, thirteen and forty generating unit systems, respectively. The results shows that performance of the proposed approach reveal the efficiently and robustness when compared results of other optimization algorithms reported in literature.