Comparison of Firefly and Hybrid Firefly-APSO Algorithm for Power Economic Dispatch Problem

摘要

This paper suggests a hybrid Firefly-APSO algorithm which uses the global best position criteria of the Accelerated Particle Swarm Optimization technique in order to update the position of the fireflies in the search space of the given objective function. To validate the significance of the suggested hybrid firefly algorithm as compared to its counterpart, a well known optimization problem known as the Economic Dispatch problem is solved using both techniques. The main objective of the dispatch problem is to minimize the total thermal generation cost by determining the optimal power contribution of each thermal energy source while meeting the system constraints. In order to make the economic dispatch problem more practical, the valve point effect loading is considered which makes the quadratic cost function of the thermal generation highly non-linear and non-convex by adding an additional sinusoidal term in the thermal cost equation. The dispatch problem is computed for multiple test cases having different number of thermal generators and dynamic load demand using both algorithms. The suggested hybrid technique surpasses the conventional firefly algorithm by reducing the overall mean generation cost of the considered network while meeting the generation constraints of the system.