Finding Optimal Load Dispatch Solutions by Using a Proposed Cuckoo Search Algorithm

Optimal load dispatch (OLD) is an important engineering problem in power system optimization field due to its significance of reducing the amount of electric generation fuel and increasing benefit. In the paper, an improved cuckoo search algorithm (ICSA) is proposed for determining optimal generation of all available thermal generation units so that all constraints consisting of prohibited power zone (PPZ), real power balance (RPB), power generation limitations (PGL), ramp rate limits (RRL), and real power reserve (RPR) are completely satisfied. The proposed ICSA method performance is more robust than conventional Cuckoo search algorithm (CCSA) by applying new modifications. Compared to CCSA, the proposed ICSA approach can obtain high quality solutions and speed up the solution search ability. The ICSA robustness is verified on different systems with diversification of objective functions as well as the considered constraint set. The results from the proposed ICSA method are compared to other algorithms for comparison. The result comparison analysis indicates that the proposed ICSA approach is more robust than CCSA and other existing optimization approaches in finding solutions with significant quality and shortening simulation time. Consequently, it should lead to a conclusion that the proposed ICSA approach deserves to be applied for finding solutions of OLD problem in power system optimization field.