Evolutionary harmony search algorithm for non-convex economic dispatch

This paper proposes an evolutionary harmony search (EHS) algorithm for solving economic dispatch (ED) problem with various non-convex objective functions. The proposed EHS is a harmony search algorithm, in which each new created harmony from the harmony memory of harmony search algorithm is based on evolutional idea. The proposed EHS has been tested on 13-unit, 40-unit and 140-unit power systems with different fuel cost functions such as quadratic function, piecewise quadratic function, valve-point effect and prohibited operation zones. The results obtained from the proposed EHS are compared to those from improved coordinated aggregation-based PSO (ICA-PSO), differential evolution (DE), simulated annealing like particle swarm optimization (SA-PSO), improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO), conventional harmony search algorithm, improved harmony search algorithm, and other methods in the literature. The result comparison has indicated that the proposed method can obtain less total costs than the others. Therefore, the proposed EHS can be a favorable method for implementation in the non-convex economic dispatch problems.