A Modified Differential Evolution Algorithm for Solving Non-Convex Dynamic Economic Dispatch Problems

In this paper, a modified differential evolution (MDE) algorithm is presented to solve non-convex dynamic economic dispatch (DED) problems considering valve-point effects, the ramp rate limits and transmission losses. The practical DED problems have non-smooth cost function with equality and inequality constraints, which make the problem of finding the global optimum difficult when using any mathematical approaches. The proposed MDE algorithm is inspired by three ideas: (1) use of opposition based learning to generate the initial population, (2) use of tournament best process to generate mutant vector to explore the region around the tournament best individual, (3) use of a single set population in contrast to the two set population as in basic DE. The feasibility of the proposed method is validated on 5 and 10 units test system for a 24 h time interval. The results are compared with the results reported in the literature. Keywords— Modified differential evolution, dynamic economic dispatch, non-smooth cost functions, ramp rate limits, valve-point effects