Quantum Inspired Evolutionary Algorithm with a Novel Elitist Local Search Method for Scheduling of Thermal Units

Abstract

The unit commitment problem is a complex and essential problem in the power generation field, which is solved to obtain the schedule of a large number of generating units to minimize the operating cost and the fulfillment of consumer load demand. The present work solves the unit commitment problem using quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms with a novel elitist local search method (QIEA-ELS). The proposed algorithm solves the unit commitment problem efficiently and its applicability is verified on various unit test systems. The constraints are satisfied efficiently to find a feasible solution, the novel elitist search method is used to locally explore the search area around the fittest individual to find a better solution in its vicinity in genotype space represent by qubits. The solution of the unit commitment is carried out considering two small population sizes as suggested in earlier work by other authors using QIEA, though it can be extended using larger population size also. The computational time is also reduced by using the suggested method with a novel elitist local search (ELS) method. The results obtained after applying the proposed algorithm are found to better as compared to other well-known solution techniques.