Abstract
Economic load dispatch (ELD) is a complicated issue, when renewable energy sources are also considered with thermal power generation systems. It becomes challenging and difficult to find the optimum solution at lower fuel costs, in order for generated power to meet the active power load demand. This paper primarily focuses on the modeling of ELD for solar power plants synchronized with Thermal power plants. In this paper, the purposed optimization method used is Genetic algorithm (GA). According to which, all thermal generators in the system will supply output power at lowest fuel rate however satisfying the system limitations. Minimum fuel cost of a generator will be calculated by using generator characteristic curve for all generators present in the system. With the help of GA, achievable range for best solution is attained while restricting the output power of thermal generators. Proposed system priority to achieve is solar at first and generators on second such that generator or combination of generators resulting in lowest cost will be on second priority. Simulations on various test systems were performed including one with six thermal generators and the other with six thermal generators and solar power system. By using MATLAB the proposed problem is simulated.
Highlights
Due to Increase demand in electricity resulting from rapid growth, development and progress worldwide the electricity shortfall is increasing day by day
As the existing conventional sources of energy are diminishing with time, search of wind, solar, biomass and other renewable energy sources is becoming more attractive for energy experts
The entire dependency on Sun, solar power system cannot be used as single primary source as the output of solar power system is highly variable which create a need for another secondary power source available at all the time
Summary
Due to Increase demand in electricity resulting from rapid growth, development and progress worldwide the electricity shortfall is increasing day by day. In previous research works done on economic load dispatch problems most commonly used techniques include Newton Rapshon Method, Gradient Method, Lambda Iteration, Interior Point Method, Perturb and Observation and penalty function method (Phonrattanasak et al, 2013). These methods are applicable only when the thermal power generators have linear and monotonically increasing fuel cost curves. The results obtained by running MATLAB simulations clearly prove the usefulness of genetic algorithm while resolving the problems associated to economic load dispatch when renewable energy sources are combined with thermal generation units
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