Solving the Unit Commitment Problem Using Modified Imperialistic Competition Algorithm

One of the most important problems for power system operation is unit commitment (UC), for which different constraints should be satisfied. UC is a nonlinear and large-scale problem; thus, using the evolutionary algorithms has been considered for solving the problem. In this paper, the solution of the UC problem was investigated using Modified Imperialistic Competition Algorithm (MICA).  Simulations were performed for a 10, 60 and 100-unit IEEE test system to produce the demand energy during a period of 24-hour. The obtained results were compared with those of some pervious algorithms such as GA, ICGA, PSO and their modified versions, and Cuckoo searching. The comparisons demonstrated the economic advantage of the presented method.