Non-convex optimisation of combined environmental economic dispatch through cultural algorithm with the consideration of the physical constraints of generating units and price penalty factors

Four versions of cultural algorithm have been proposed to find an optimal solution of the combined environmental economic dispatch problem. The main objective of combined environmental economic dispatch is to simultaneously minimise two competitive objectives of fuel cost and emission, while satisfying various power system constraints such as the valve-point effect, emission costs, the prohibited operation zone, the ramp-rate limit, and the transmission losses. In order to solve this non-convex and non-continuous multi-objective optimisation problem with the cultural algorithm, the objective function has been converted to a single objective function using a technique called price penalty factor. Four different types of penalty factors have been examined in this paper. Three different test case systems with 5, 20, and 50 generating units have been implemented to investigate the performance and effectiveness of proposed algorithms. The cultural algorithm shows a superior performance in handling the combined environmental economic dispatch problem in comparison to other methods. © 2016 South African Institute of Electrical Engineers. All rights reserved.