Optimum generation scheduling of coordinated power system using hybrid optimization technique

In a maiden attempt, the optimum generation scheduling problem of the coordinated power system is formulated. In a coordinated system, thermal, heat, hydro and combined heat and power units are incorporated in order to achieve the maximum utilization of all the energy sources. The optimum generation scheduling formulates a hard constraint, non-convex optimization problem. Hence, in order to solve the scheduling problem, a hybrid optimization technique, namely grey wolf optimization (GWO) with mutation strategies (GWO-MS), has been proposed. The proposed technique exhibits excellent exploration and exploitation capability. In the proposed technique, the solution obtained by GWO is further enhanced by three mutation strategies, i.e. Cauchy, Gaussian and opposition-based. For validation of the proposed technique, it has been implemented on four test systems. The first system deals with hydrothermal generation scheduling problem, including transmission losses and obtained results, have been compared with published results. Three coordinated generation scheduling problems have been undertaken, and the results obtained by the proposed technique are compared with GWO and found satisfactory. Further, Student t test and Mann–Whitey test have been applied to investigate the statistical performance of the proposed technique.