A Novel Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm for Solving Environmental/economic Dispatch Problem

This paper presents a new multiobjective evolutionary algorithm for Environmental/Economic power Dispatch (EED) problem. The EED problem is formulated as a nonlinear constrained multiobjective optimization problem. A new Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm (SPEA) based approach is proposed to handle the problem as a true multiobjective problem with competing and non-commensurable objectives. The proposed approach employs a diversity-preserving mechanism to overcome the premature convergence and search bias problems. A hierarchical clustering algorithm is also imposed to provide the decision maker with a representative and manageable Pareto-optimal set. Moreover, fuzzy set theory is employed to extract the best compromise nondominated solution. The proposed approach is applied to the IEEE 30-bus system. The results demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach to generate well-distributed Pareto-optimal solutions of the multiobjective EED problem in one single run. The comparison with the classical techniques demonstrates the superiority of the proposed approach and confirms its potential to solve the multiobjective EED problem.