A Phase-Based Adaptive Differential Evolution Algorithm for the Economic Load Dispatch Considering Valve-Point Effects and Transmission Losses

A phase-based adaptive differential evolution (PADE) algorithm is proposed to solve the economic load dispatch (ELD) considering valve-point effects (VPE) and transmission losses. To a great extent, PADE makes up for the drawbacks of the traditional differential evolution (DE) through three improvements. First, we establish an archive of storing successful individuals to improve the quality of offspring. Second, to balance the exploring and exploiting ability of the algorithm, a phase-based mutation operation is carried out. Third, two control parameters are adaptively adjusted, which is helpful for enhancing the robustness of the algorithm. In addition, two types of repair methods of constraint handling are employed for the ELD without or with transmission losses to help PADE find feasible solutions more efficiently. A performance comparison between PADE and other DE approaches from the literature was carried out on six ELD test cases which consider a set of operating constraints including the VPE and transmission losses. Results show a competitive PADE performance in all test cases regarding the compared DE approaches. Compared to methods from the literature, the costs obtained by PADE are lower in most cases while the corresponding constraint violations reach a lower level.