Artificial Intelligence Techniques For Optimum Allocation of Generating Units

Abstract- Economic load dispatch ELD is a sub problem of the optimal power flow OPF having the objective of fuel cost minimization. The fuel cost equation of a thermal plant is generally expressed as continuous quadratic equation. In real situations the fuel cost equations can be discontinuous. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence especially in evolutionary algorithms have enabled much efficient way to solve the constrained optimization problems in various fields of engineering. In this paper we applied Particle Swarm optimization PSO technique to a 3-generator test system having continuous fuel cost equations. Results are compared to conventional quadratic programming method to show the superiority of the proposed computational intelligence technique.