Binary Fireworks Algorithm Based Thermal Unit Commitment

Abstract

This paper presents the first application of fireworks algorithm to solve thermal unit commitment and scheduling problem. The scheduling problem accompanied by many constraints i.e., equality constraints like load balance and inequality constraints like system reserve and bounds like power generation, up/down time and ramp rate limits, finally shapes into a complex optimization problem. In this work, the scheduling and commitment problem is solved using binary fireworks algorithm (BFWA), which mimics explosion of fireworks in the sky to define search space and distance between associated sparks to evaluate global minimum. Further, the effectiveness of fireworks pertaining to problem dimension, wide range of generation units from 10 to 100 are considered and evaluated. In addition, simulations results are compared to the existing optimization techniques in literature used for unit commitment and scheduling problem and it is observed that, BFWA is superior to some of the profound existing algorithms in achieving near optimal scheduling.