A Modified Fireworks Algorithm to Solve the Heat and Power Generation Scheduling Problem in Power System Studies

Abstract

One of the most important issues in the energy generation scheduling is the determination of the operating points of the electric and thermal energy resources. In the real conditions, there are different types of energy resources available for fulfilling the electrical and thermal load demands. The power plants (thermal generating units), boilers, as well as Combined Heat and Power (CHP) units are the most common technologies to serve this purpose. The main objective beyond solving the generation scheduling problem here is to determine the optimal operating points of these units to meet the electrical and thermal load demands. Since the determination of the optimal operating points of each generating unit to meet the load demand depends upon the technical and thermodynamic conditions of each unit, it is necessary to adopt an optimization problem to derive the optimal utilization pattern. In this chapter, the state of the art of the generation scheduling problem, as well as the mathematical expression regarding this problem, is investigated. In order to solve the aforementioned problem, the modified fireworks algorithm is adopted in this paper to solve the mentioned problem, and its performance is verified through comparing the results with those reported by other optimization algorithms by simulating the Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) and the combined heat and power scheduling (CHPS) problems.