Operational Solution to Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) of power plants by different deterministic methods and Particle Swarm Optimization

Decision-making for operational optimization Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) is one of the most important tasks in thermal power plants, which provides an economic condition for power generation systems. The aim of this paper is to analyze the application of evolutionary computational methods to determine the best situation of generation of the different units in a plant so that the total cost of fuel to be minimal and at the same time, ensuring that demand and total losses any time be equal to the total power generated. Various traditional methods have been developed for solving the Economic Load Dispatch, among them: lambda iteration, the gradient method, the Newton's method, and so others. They allow determining the ideal combination of output power of all generating units in order to meet the required demand without violation of the generators restrictions. This article presents an analysis of different mathematical methods to solve the problem of optimization in ELD. The results show a case study applied in a thermal power plant with 10 generating units considering the loss of power and its restrictions, using MATLAB tools by developed techniques with particle swarm algorithm.