Development of New Approaches for Applying Genetic Algorithm to Unit Commitment and Economic Dispatch Problems

The unit commitment (UC) is formulated as a minimization problem of a cost function, which consists of the sum of fuel and start-up costs subject tosome constraints. The economic dispatch (ED) involves the minimization of a function describing the fuel consumption cost for allocation of committed units formeeting the power system demand in any hour. The objectives of this study include development of a novel optimization methodology (NOM) for solving the UCproblem that is based on formulation of the fitness function and a modified genetic algorithm (MGA) forsolving the ED problem that is accomplished by meansof reducing the problem dimension. The application of the NOM and MGA is provided for a 10-unit powersystem for a 24 hour period. The results showimprovements between 0.05 and 4.16% in total costs, as compared with other papers. For future works, theapplication of proposed optimization methodologies for the UC and ED with ramp-rate and environmental constraints is recommended

Keywords:

Unit Commitment , Economic Dispatch , Genetic Algorithm , Optimization methodology