Hydro-thermal scheduling under RE uncertainties using an improved cheetah optimization

To minimize total operating costs, emissions, and power losses, the optimum power generation and scheduling of renewable integrated hydro-thermal systems are one of the most significant objectives in short-term scheduling. The solution to these problems becomes more difficult with constraints and renewable uncertainties. The paper presents an improved cheetah optimizer (ICO) for solving the optimum wind-solar-hydro-thermal scheduling problem considering valve loading effects, ramp-rate limits, power loss, and prohibited operational zone constraints. The main objective is to optimize the total fuel cost and emissions for thermal power generators, where electric power can be fully harnessed from renewable generators. Different test systems are employed to evaluate the proposed ICO solution method's performance. The proposed ICO solution method is compared with other algorithms like grey wolf optimizer, and particle swarm optimizer, in terms of optimal fuel costs, emissions, convergence success rate, and computation time. The test systems are incorporated with wind farms, solar farm, hydropower generators, and thermal power generators scheduled for 24-h, 1-h subintervals. The simulation solutions of the renewable integrated system have been acquired by ICO, CO, GWO, and PSO. The total generation cost obtained by ICO is 0.0698%, and 0.1514% lower than the cost obtained by GWO, and PSO respectively. The total power loss was minimized by 1.8554% and 7.4002%. The total emissions can be reduced to 25% with increasing penetration of renewable energy sources. It is realized from the comparison that the proposed ICO method has the potential to provide better-quality solutions.